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what's the tldr on a proposed world where the unix mistake didn't happen? how could have computing played out and iterated better?

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I think https://www.dreamsongs.com/WIB.html "2.1 The Rise of Worse is Better" is as good a comparison as one can get.

(I'm neutral but I like the historic context)

GP should be grateful we didn't get stuck with Multics, ITS, or TOPS20 instead.

No kidding. The playing field wasn't super great, and Unix was and is still a top contender even today.

CP/M. OS/2. MS-DOS. OS/2 Warp. Windows. Windows NT. Mac OS. VMS...

Yeah, maybe we optimistically speculate that Smalltalk or Lisp Machines would have won instead, but it may have been the poorer alternatives that would have won if not UNIX

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