Re: [TUHS] cat -v and other complaints

On Tuesday, September 4, 2018, ron minnich <rminnich(a)gmail.com> wrote: Can you elaborate more on your point of view? There has been a slow shift in the way we use computer interfaces and the start of the "windows computing" revolution certainly happened around mid 80s with companies like Apple, Microsoft or Commodore developing their own version of GUI (which goes back to Xerox PARC of course). Unix received X Window System from MIT in 1984. At the time people thought that GUI is the best and most useful interface for the new era and text terminal computing is about to die pretty soon. Well it took at least 10 more years to happen and the introduction of World Wide Web and Windows 95 certainly help solidify it. When Plan 9 was created in the mid-late 80s exactly those ideas circulated. Nothing comes from nothing, everything has its historical context. In the late 80s in order to "innovate" it was natural to think that abandoning text terminals is a "progress". Unix was born in the different era. Same with the original IBM PC. That is why they revolve around pure text interface. I'm just glad that text mode survived and it is still available even on modern PC's. But most kids these days don't even know what it is... They have GUIs everywhere, from their smartphones to their laptops. It is a very sad state of things when people more and more abandon text computing for the image based computing. I agree with Kurt that we are already in the Information Technology ice age. General purpose pure text based computing is slowly becoming just a retro hobby. --Andy