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[fouts at ames-nas-gw.arpa]

From:  Martin Fouts <fouts at ames-nas-gw.arpa>

I agree in principle that Unix was designed for hack.. (er) system
developers, rather than non professionals, but any application package
is going to reflect the underlying structure.

     It doesn't really matter what the original intent was, just as it
no longer matters that all Wirth wanted from Pascal was a teaching
tool.  Someone saw some promise beyond the intent, and now Unix is
popping up in a lot of places where it "doesn't belong."  I still think
we should try to develope an underlying system which allows development
work to still be done byt leads to good application environments.
After all, the development work we are doing is for that environment.

I appreciate the problem you have with the models people develop, but
"computer scientists" also have problems;  I still get asked from time
to time if a particular machine is octal or hexadecimal by people who
should know better.  It isn't important that the model exactly reflect
the makeup of the underlying machine, but rather that it can be
accurately used to predict the exterior behavior of the machine.

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