On Wed, Sep 14, 2011 at 4:32 PM, Paul McNett <p...@ulmcnett.com> wrote:
> Several things make the *nix shell so useful, but mostly it's that there are > hundreds > (thousands?) of shell utilities at your disposal that are designed to do > exactly one > thing very well. They accept, at a minimum, input on stdin and output, at a > minimum, > on stdout, allowing chaining of commands. > > The ability to write shell scripts in whatever language you want, invoking > other > scripts in whatever language they are written in also helps. The core principles of UNIX and Windows are in opposition. There's a basic difference in attitude. > For Microsoft to come close to this, they shouldn't be reinventing but > embracing and > extending (I thought they were supposed to be pretty good at that, after all). Well, they're jumping on the bandwagon of PHP on IIS reading SQL Server, for example. But it's a pretty muddled message. > I never understood why MS had to make HTML Help so bloody complex. Why did it > need to > be "compiled", for instance. Generating the indexes for keyword search, contents, cross-references, mostly, I suspect. HTML Help had to integrate into applications that would call out for help in context-sensitive ways, so the application link had to be matched up with the appropriate page/resource. It wasn't protecting the content, as HTML Help Workshop has always come with a decompiler. I wonder if it was just something that escaped from the lab and started with "hey, that's cool!" and grew into "what problem can we make this solve?" -- Ted Roche Ted Roche & Associates, LLC http://www.tedroche.com _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: ProFox@leafe.com Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/cacw6n4vpzztxz+vmlrrio_q3z3tlgt6hhbvwqaeo6fsviaj...@mail.gmail.com ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
