

It's easier to port a shell than a shell script - lpgauth
http://www.quux.org:70/Humor%20and%20Fun/Microsoft_KSH.txt%7C/MBOX-MESSAGE/1

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herdrick
Right, that's part of 'worse is better'. Easier to build the system, harder to
program well on it.

EDIT: I wrote that before reading. The title isn't very relevant to the post.

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omrisiri
It is rather hilarious. I have similar situations more than too often when
some of my students will argue with me that it is not possible to do
something, even after they just received indisputable proof that it just
happened.

I usually try to humbly explain why they were wrong in that case(usually some
misconceptions on how something works), which will usually reduce the amount
of future arguments regarding the material presented. While patronizing will
usually just make them try to prove themselves more often , and catch you in
the nuances of a subject.

In this case it doesn't surprise me that Microsoft was (again) caught trying
to redefine standards based on their own perception of those standards.

~~~
avar
> [...] Microsoft was (again) caught trying to redefine standards based on
> their own perception of those standards.

Or, more simply and less nefariously. They put a management droid on stage.
The person answering the questions likely wasn't aware of the nuances in ksh
implementations. Hey's just the Microsoft equivalent of a used car salesman.

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brendano
Microsoft bashing seems so dated now. Poor MS. Had no idea how to build a
decent shell.

~~~
Luyt
They should have ported the standard shell, /bin/sh, which is still used for
executing most scripts (via the #!/bin/sh shebang at the top of the script),
independent of what shell the user uses interactively.

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gaius
Is this down or is port 70 being blocked by my firewall? Why not run on the
proper port!?

~~~
spc476
Because it's actually a gopher server that understands HTTP. You can also get
to the page at
gopher://gopher.quux.org/0/Humor%20and%20Fun/Microsoft_KSH.txt|/MBOX-MESSAGE/1

~~~
D-Coder
Didn't work for me. However the Almighty Google found this which appears to be
the same thing:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/cyojx/its_easie...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/cyojx/its_easier_to_port_a_shell_than_a_shell_script/)

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tlrobinson
Something similar has happened to me before. I was sitting in the audience of
a talk, and the speaker said something blatantly wrong about something I had
worked on, so I asked them to clarify, and they responded with something like
"they did such and such", which was also wrong, so I said something to the
effect of "well, 'they' is 'me' and you're wrong because blah blah". They
didn't have much to say after that.

~~~
dctoedt
The story reminded me of an analogous experience I had some years ago. A
client asked me to help negotiate a software license agreement drafted by the
other side’s lawyer. I saw that the other lawyer had selectively copied and
edited a set of model software license provisions developed by an ABA
committee. It amused my client when, on the negotiation conference call, I
pointed out to the other lawyer that he had left out certain language that had
been included in the model provisions to make them a reasonable compromise on
the issue in question. The other lawyer was a bit discomfited when he realized
that I was the lead author of the model provisions and the chairman of the
drafting committee. (This actually happened twice, in the space of just a few
days, for two different clients.)

~~~
roel_v
I hate to send people email out of the blue so I'm just asking permission
first - can I email you for a career advice question?

~~~
dctoedt
Sure - sorry it's taken so long to respond, I haven't looked at this post in
awhile.

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hapless
Incidentally, Microsoft abandoned MKS almost immediately. They bought Interix
very soon after. Interix implemented UNIX system calls natively, so it always
came with traditional, useful shells. It's now bundled into Windows as a free
product: Subsystem for Unix Application (SUA) or Services For UNIX (SFU).

Last I checked, you could still buy MKS Toolkit from MKS, but I have no idea
why you would want to.

~~~
mhansen
How does it compare with cygwin? Can I fire up bash with SUA?

~~~
thristian
It's been a while since I played with Services-For-Unix, but I recall it's
better than Cygwin in that it's not a POSIX shim sitting on top of Win32, but
actually sits beside Win32 on top of the NT kernel (which was always designed
to support POSIX to some degree). It integrates the POSIX notion of user IDs
with ActiveDirectory, etc.

Where it all falls down, of course, is the usual bane of proprietary unicies -
packaging. I think there's a 'freeware' site with tarballs of various useful
tools you can download, but nothing approaching even Cygwin's small and
limited packaging and upgrade system, let alone a real distro like Debian.

