> To me, before I met Unisys' MCP, it was the epitome of user-hostile OS. Not because it's particularly difficult to navigate, but that everything is deeply alien (same feeling as z/OS, BTW).
Nit, but you're not describing something that's "user-hostile," just something that's unfamiliar to the user that is you.
Alien could actually be very good and user-friendly, since a lot of the stuff we're used to frankly sucks, and we're stuck as at an inferior local maxima that's very hard to get out of.
Though that's MVS, which probably should no be conflated with OS/400. The former is all kinds of trouble because it maintains compatibility with stuff from really old and limited systems, while the latter is quite a bit newer than UNIX so could have alien-advanced "science fiction" features.
True. It's a bit mind blowing that some metaphors in MVS (that carry over to z/OS) are rooted on decks of punched cards.
OS/400 has much newer ones and some of those are futuristic even now (the single memory map that encompasses fixed storage is a pretty cool one, even though deeply alien for most people).
Nit, but you're not describing something that's "user-hostile," just something that's unfamiliar to the user that is you.
Alien could actually be very good and user-friendly, since a lot of the stuff we're used to frankly sucks, and we're stuck as at an inferior local maxima that's very hard to get out of.