Re: [9fans] Simple

["kim kubik" <chaotrope@jps.net>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Laura Creighton <lac@cd.chalmers.se>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu <9fans@cse.psu.edu>
Cc: lac@cd.chalmers.se <lac@cd.chalmers.se>
Date: Thursday, November 23, 2000 1:45 PM
Subject: [9fans] Simple


>>Yeah, but doesn't the S in SMTP mean simple?
>>-rob
>
>Next time you write a book, do you think you could devote a chapter on
>what is simple?

May, 1986 interview with Dick Haight (then Supervisor of
Technical Staff at Bell Labs) in "Unix Review":

Questioned about the move to GUIs and how it affects
a Unix that can only offer shells:

  "it messes up what has always been a beautifully
   simple programming system.  UNIX has only a small
   number of system calls and is amazingly consistent
   from on layer to the next.  Ken Thompson took great
   care in writing a lot of those inner layers.  You
   know, in the early days, it was an aesthetic experience
   to get deep down in the system."

and a bit later:

  "I still remember the first time I read Ken Thompson's
   recursive descent assembly language parsing.  It was
   sort of like Paul's vision on the road to Damascus -
   in programmer's terms, of course."

Sounds like "simple" to me .  .  .

Best part of interview, though, was, "I remember that on
one unannounced visit to the attic UNIX lab in Murray Hill,
some of these three-piece-suit guys found Ken Thompson in
the carcass of a PDP-11 - like he was under a car working
on the oil pan or something.  The culture shock was more
than those management guys could stand.  I think that
visit set PWB back a month or two."

There's some other interesting history about putting JCL
error (IBM systems) to get top priority on a resubmitted
job and send to files different machines by 'faking' them 
to be line printers. . .

 - k