17 Jan
2019
17 Jan
'19
12:24 a.m.
On Wed, Jan 16, 2019 at 01:13:30PM -0500, Clem Cole wrote:
The problem as Larry point out, is that when some one
else does something
that is economically a better solution, it is marketing jobs to understand
that. and help lead the company with products that work.
I'm sure I'm not alone in being an engineer that was interally very
critical of our own products (didn't matter which company). It is a
HUGE mistake to let engineers even hear their own marketing.
Marketing is, if not outright lieing, a lot like a first date. You put
the best version of you possible forward, you leave all the other crud
in the closet.
Engineers need to be running benchmarks, seeing how hard/easy it is to
build X11, they need to be looking for the places their products are
weak instead of listening to marketing talking about the places where
the product is strong.
I took no end of shit for doing exactly that, people thought I was
disloyal. Which is rubbish, you can't fix your crap until you face it.
Doesn't matter, seems like all engineering orgs fall into the trap of
believing their own marketing. If I were still looking for work that
would be a red flag.
Getting back to TUHS, it's interesting to note that Unix has prevailed, in
spite of many companies doing their best to "improve" it out of existence.
Yeah, HPUX/IRIX/AIX/Solaris/etc are all dead so far as I know, but
the basic Unix model lives on in Linux. I wish one of the decent Unix
variants was still vibrant just so Linux doesn't get complacent.