re: #176 Romantic Heretic

That sums my opinion on Unix pretty nicely.

I regard Unix as the Latin of the computer priesthood. Its purpose isn’t to facilitate communication but to inhibit it. The language makes sure that the power stays inside the group that uses it and guarantees that the great unwashed will be dependent on the intervention of the enlightened to gain any access at all to God (computer).

Considering the available terminals in the early days, short/cryptic commands were favored by those who wanted their fingers still functional after age 30 or so. Image: File:ASR-33_at_CHM.agr.jpg