On Mon, Jul 5, 2021 at 3:15 AM Tomasz Rola wrote: > So, looking from this perspective, maybe there was nothing > particularly special in Unix as such. It was just a double pump of > C-Unix, mutually pumping each other's success story. > I think there is more to it than that. See < http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/unix-koans/zealot.html>. I am not sure. I tried to find some time and install old OS on > simh/pdp11, yet there was always something more pressing to do. Some > alternatives to Unix, judging by their wikipedia descriptions, did not > convince me - like, one OS booted straight into debugger, if memory > serves. ITS, yes. But the debugger was not just a debugger, it was also a general command-line interpreter, a shell in modern terms. So while it is possible to debug an empty memory into doing whatever you want, it is also possible to run "advent", aka Colossal Cave Adventure. > And after > reading about TECO, plenty of editors seem like better choice for me > :-). > I switched from Teco to ex at some point, and never went either forward or back. (Occasionally I drop into vi mode for things like parenthesis checking.) By the way, did anyone else start out on Unix-alikes before using actual Unix? I read the BSTJ issue and became an instant convert, but only when $EMPLOYER got a MicroVAX was I able to work like that. Next came the MKS Toolkit on DOS, and then Cygwin for many years. I suppose it's only my last two $EMPLOYERs standardizing on the Mac that has left me running, like, actual Unix. If I still stick to Unix, it is because I still need something > dependable and allowing my various experiments or small time > developments. > "Computers are the greatest set of electric trains in the world." > I still suggest they are following the money. They are the > kind of folk who never would find Unix interesting enough based on > merits only. Asking about their choices leads us nowwhere, because > their choices are not based on technical criteria. > True. But then, many of us geeks make our choices not on technical criteria but on tribal loyalty. Which is *technically* superior, vi or emacs? (Please don't answer that.) > Of course I could not be using specialised note > taking program. Instead, I went with Emacs and org-mode. In the > process I had to learn a bit of Elisp and dot-emacs file. Some > defaults in Emacs are not comfy for my eyes - fonts, colors, it had to > be fine tuned to my liking. > Note that Emacs is probably the oldest import into the Unix ecosystem from outside, and it bears the marks of its origin: monolithic (but programmable), one tool does it all. > I wonder if other Unix (ab)users share something with me? Like, > specialised single-person needs, or putting together building blocks > of command line tools, or preference for terminal based software > (because it works more often than not)? > Without doubt. I am not loyal to a kernel or a set of utilities, I simply follow the Way of Unix: (sadly incomplete) John Cowan http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan cowan@ccil.org "Hacking is the true football." --F.W. Campbell (1863) in response to a successful attempt to ban shin-kicking from soccer. Today, it's biting.