Unix chose the midpoint between raw unformatted byte input and output (*argv being a raw byte array and stdout being binary or not existing at all and outputs would be configured by whatever was passed into argv) and structured results or a typed-function interface (like COM or CORBA or XML). Either extreme would have been untenable for a cohesive simple operating system, but I do wish Unix had leaned a bit farther toward the typed-interface design. We even had all the ASCII file/group/record/unit control characters.