Comment by nologic01 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nologic01 | Hacker News Reader

The issue with "Unix", both as a technology and as an idea, is that has remained substantially incomplete. It never developed the next layer(s) that would help embrace all users, not just the technical ones. The fact that the project/ideology/mindset is old does not mean it is rounded, finished and fulfilled.

"Unix" missed the popularization of compute not once but twice, first with the infamous "linux desktop", then with the mobile revolution.

There does not seem to be a technical reason why this "completion" has not happened. The history of computing is idiosyncratic, very far from exploring the phase space of possibilities, let alone converging on optimal ones. Random economic and regulatory/political constructs helped fill the gap in all the abominable ways that dominate today's landscape.

Yet Unix 2.0 - the human-centered version is just a finite number of keystrokes away...

> There does not seem to be a technical reason why this "completion" has not happened.

I'd say there is. Unix is a wonderful toolkit of tools that all work together in the most wonderful way. You can build your own perfectly custom anything by piecing tools together exactly how you want. I can't think of a more satisfying playground for a technical person.

Thing is, the nontechnical users don't want that. So building something on top of Unix that can "embrace all users, not just the technical ones" will by definition hide or remove nearly all the interesting lego-like interlocking tool functionality.

So at that level, the Unix desktop is an impossible contradiction. Sure you can built plenty of desktops on top of Unix and plenty have been written. But at that point it isn't quite Unix anymore, unless you ignore the desktop and open xterm.

> will by definition hide or remove

I am not sure that follows. Maybe the "hiding" part in some sense, but without any negative impact. One approach is to pre-package a set of components for the tasks people use frequently and for which they expect to have a simple interface. Such an arrangement does not prevent power users from clicking on the proverbial "developer" option and unlocking the components, creating new mashups.

For sure such a natural and intuitive higher level interface is non-trivial to design. It would be as important an innovation as the underlying unix itself.

Early on, Unix was in use across the phone company and normal people used it for their every day tasks. All Unix users read the manual. Otherwise you're not really a Unix user.

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