Thanks. The article makes more sense now.

For example, from the preface:

  “I liken starting one’s computing career with Unix,
   say as an undergraduate, to being born in East Africa.
   It is intolerably hot, your body is covered with lice 
   and flies, you are malnourished and you suffer from 
   numerous curable diseases. But, as far as young East 
   Africans can tell, this is simply the natural condition 
   and they live within it. By the time they find out 
   differently, it is too late. They already think that the 
   writing of shell scripts is a natural act.”
          — Ken Pier, Xerox PARC

I have a copy of UHH, and it's a funny read. It even points out some pitfalls to watch out for, at least back in the day. That said, Ubuntu now works pretty darn well, and with "Netflix in a box" devices, we're almost Windows-free at home.

I wonder what Ken Pier thought of something like NOS on CDC-Cyber back in the 80s? Now that was a rough system. "Find the program" (... OK, done, ....) ... "Now, actually run it" (2 steps!); "Compile my program" "oops, 'rewind' the binary output target" (WTF?!?) "Now compile my program so that I see the current result". And so on...

Yeow. That's a pretty harsh criticism. What alternatives were they in favor of?

It's PARC so likely a smalltalk environment is one of the alternatives.