Re: OT - Shutting down an RS/6000 ?

Joe Pluta wrote:

From: Hans Boldt

And if a Unix admin wanted to find out how to shutdown an iSeries,
would it really be any easier for him to discover the PWRDWNSYS command?

Hans, I hope you're not actually intimating that a Unix system is as
user-friendly as an AS/400.  If so, your bias is getting a little lopsided,
even for you.
...

Joe: Remember, there are different classes of users, each with
different needs, skills, and abilities. Does the average OS/400
end-user really care how to look up and prompt an OS/400 command? Do
you ever even really want to offer the average end-user an OS/400
command prompt? No end-user in *any* operating system should ever
have to deal with any command line shell, period. And so the issue
of *user*-friendliness is, to me at least, moot.

On the other hand, the needs and abilities of programmers and
administrators are very different. Certainly, Posix command shells
are not as *user*-friendly as the OS/400 command prompt. But I will
defend the point that Posix command shells do tend to be more
*programmer*-friendly. And that issue is much more important to most
of us in our (yours and mine) line of work.

There's a different philosophy to Posix commands. Posix commands
tend to be more flexible in that many are designed as filters. That
is, they accept input from stdin and output to stdout. Single Posix
commands may be simpler than OS/400 commands, but they can be
combined in many different ways. There are easy ways to do things in
Posix that aren't quite so easy in OS/400.

Learning commands in any command shell is much like learning any new
language. There are always new concepts and idioms to learn, and
some languages may be more or less difficult to learn than others.
But what matters most to the average programmer is the ability to
express complex tasks in an expeditious and effective manner. And
Posix philosophy offers that quite nicely.

Help is available. Perhaps in not quite as nice a form as in OS/400,
but available nonetheless. Furthermore, there is a vast support
community out there, should the need arise. (And yes, the need does
occasionally arise. ;-)

OK, I'll come right out and say it: Yeah, I'm a Unix bigot.
Furthermore, Unix in general and Linux in particular are important
to my employer's business. Very important indeed!

Cheers!  Hans