[COFF] Re: [TUHS] Re: crt0 -- what's in that name?

[COFF] Re: [TUHS] Re: crt0 -- what's in that name?

[Clem Cole]

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Apologies to TUHS - other than please don't think Fortran did not impact
UNIX and its peers.  We owe that community our jobs, and for creating the
market in that we all would build systems and eventually improve.

Note: I'm CCing COFF - you want to continue this...

On Mon, Jun 12, 2023 at 5:39 PM G. Branden Robinson <
g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:

> It's an ill wind that blows a Fortran runtime using the same convention.
>
Be careful there, weedhopper ...    Fortran gave a lot to computing
(including UNIX) and frankly still does.   I did not write have too much
Fortran as a professional (mostly early in my career),  but I did spent 50+
years ensuring that the results of the Fortran compiler ran >>really well<<
on the systems I built.   As a former collegiate of Paul W and I once said,
"*Any computer executive that does not take Fortran seriously will not have
their job very long.*  It pays our salary."

It's still the #1 language for science [its also not the same language my
Father learned in the late 50s/early 60s, much less the one I learned 15
years later - check out:  In what type of work is the Fortran Programming
Language most used today
<https://www.quora.com/In-what-type-of-work-is-the-Fortran-programming-language-most-used-today/answer/Clem-Cole>
,  Is Fortran still alive
<https://www.quora.com/Is-Fortran-still-alive/answer/Clem-Cole>, Is Fortran
obsolete <https://www.quora.com/Is-Fortran-obsolete/answer/Clem-Cole>

FWIW:  These days, the Intel Fortran compiler (and eventually the LLVM one,
which Intel is the primary developer), calls the C/C++ common runtime for
support.  Most libraries are written in C, C++, (or assembler in some very
special cases) - so now it's C that keeps Fortran alive.  But "in the
beginning" it was all about Fortran because that paid the bills then and
still does today.

ᐧ

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[COFF] Re: [TUHS] Re: crt0 -- what's in that name?

[G. Branden Robinson]

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Hi Clem,

At 2023-06-12T18:39:32-0400, Clem Cole wrote:
> Apologies to TUHS - other than please don't think Fortran did not
> impact UNIX and its peers.  We owe that community our jobs, and for
> creating the market in that we all would build systems and eventually
> improve.

Absolutely.  Fortran (77) was the first language this weedhopper learned
after BASIC (which, while much despised by the sorts of people who
update jargon files, _also_ had early support in CSRC Unix).  While I
intensely disliked the fixed-source format (a defect Fortran 90
remedied), I acquired it more easily than C, to the relief of the guys
on my class project team who already knew C and _hated_ Fortran.

My wisecrack was not meant as a derogation of Fortran in any way, but
rather as a sly (not really) allusion to a word also appearing in your
expansion of the COFF list's name as seen above...

Best regards to you and to Fortran, and a nod to the copy of
Metcalf/Reid/Cohen on my bookshelf,
Branden

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[COFF] Re: [TUHS] Re: crt0 -- what's in that name?

[Clem Cole]

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Fair enough 👍
ᐧ

On Mon, Jun 12, 2023 at 6:50 PM G. Branden Robinson <
g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi Clem,
>
> At 2023-06-12T18:39:32-0400, Clem Cole wrote:
> > Apologies to TUHS - other than please don't think Fortran did not
> > impact UNIX and its peers.  We owe that community our jobs, and for
> > creating the market in that we all would build systems and eventually
> > improve.
>
> Absolutely.  Fortran (77) was the first language this weedhopper learned
> after BASIC (which, while much despised by the sorts of people who
> update jargon files, _also_ had early support in CSRC Unix).  While I
> intensely disliked the fixed-source format (a defect Fortran 90
> remedied), I acquired it more easily than C, to the relief of the guys
> on my class project team who already knew C and _hated_ Fortran.
>
> My wisecrack was not meant as a derogation of Fortran in any way, but
> rather as a sly (not really) allusion to a word also appearing in your
> expansion of the COFF list's name as seen above...
>
> Best regards to you and to Fortran, and a nod to the copy of
> Metcalf/Reid/Cohen on my bookshelf,
> Branden
>

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[COFF] Re: [TUHS] Re: crt0 -- what's in that name?

[Paul Winalski]

On 6/12/23, Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Jun 12, 2023 at 5:39 PM G. Branden Robinson <
> g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> It's an ill wind that blows a Fortran runtime using the same convention.
>>
> Be careful there, weedhopper ...

I don't think this remark was intended to denigrate Fortran in any
way.  I took it as a wryly humorous way to make the observation that C
and Fortran have different program startup semantics, and that there
is other stuff that has to be done when firing up a program written
wholly or partially in Fortran beyond what is needed to start up a C
application.

Most operating system ABIs, Unix included, don't have a formalized
mechanism for dealing with the differences between startup semantics
of various programming languages.  They deal with the problem in an
ad-hack fashion.  The one exception that I know of is VMS (now
OpenVMS).  Tom Hastings was the architect who designed the original
VAX/VMS ABI.  He was aware from the get-go that several programming
languages had to be supported and he made sure that his design was
general enough to allow programmers to write routines in the most
suitable language for them, to mix and match modules written in
different languages in the same program, and to easily make calls from
one language to another.  It was a stroke of genius and I haven't seen
its like in any other OS (several times I've wished it was there,
though).

Further discussion in COFF.

-Paul W.

[COFF] Re: [TUHS] Re: crt0 -- what's in that name?

[G. Branden Robinson]

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[Clem and TUHS dropped from CC]

Hi Paul,

At 2023-06-12T19:04:31-0400, Paul Winalski wrote:
> I don't think this remark was intended to denigrate Fortran in any
> way.  I took it as a wryly humorous way to make the observation that C
> and Fortran have different program startup semantics, and that there
> is other stuff that has to be done when firing up a program written
> wholly or partially in Fortran beyond what is needed to start up a C
> application.

It was really just a fart joke--you know, "breaking wind" and all that.
libcrt0.s -> libfrt0.s ...

But you're getting at an actual problem I had when trying to learn
linking and loading on Unix beyond the level of recipes keyed in by
rote.  (My upbringing was on systems with the most minimal conceivable
object file formats, and your runtime support was in either in ROM or
you provided it yourself.)  Being of a certain age, 'crt0' (a name
preserved by the GNU C compiler) looked to me for all the world like it
must have had to do with driving a CRT.  This made little sense to me,
especially when the darn thing got shoved into computation-only programs
that performed no I/O at all.  I could find no documentation, nor at
that time any local experts who could tell me what the heck "crt" was
_for_.  (The BSD advocates I knew back in the day suggested that this
was my fault for not locating and apprenticing myself to such a master;
the guild mentality was, and in some ways still is, powerful there.)

I am probably not the only person who was sent down an incorrect chain
of deductions by this "economical" naming convention; furthermore, one
employed for the sake of a file name that almost no one ever typed
anyway.

To bang an old drum of mine, while Unix culture pats itself on the back
for economizing keystrokes with an ad hoc compression scheme for every
name in sight, it too often overlooks what discarded in pursuit of this
form of minimality: clarity, lack of ambiguity, and ease of acquisition
by newcomers.

I get that Teletypes were hard to type on and baud rates were
punitively low.  But when Bell Labs got the Blit, the limitations that
motivated the original terseness were not only not discarded, but
retained and doubled down on.  "We're going multi-architecture for Plan
9, so let's allocate every machine architecture we'll ever be presented
with an identifier from a single-character alphanumeric namespace."

Madness.[1]

Decades after tcsh brought tab-completion to the shell-using masses, and
just as many decades after this feature was cloned by every Unix shell
that wasn't moribund, the defenders of keystroke minimality aren't
content to cultivate their own private name space of single-letter shell
functions, scripts, or aliases--instead they rebut the above by
complaining that GNU-style architecture triples are way too long.  Way
too long for what?  To type out in full?  Sure.  Too long to tell you
what ABI the objects produced are going to use?  No.

At least APL chose sigils that were tough to confuse with other things.

> Most operating system ABIs, Unix included, don't have a formalized
> mechanism for dealing with the differences between startup semantics
> of various programming languages.  They deal with the problem in an
> ad-hack fashion.  The one exception that I know of is VMS (now
> OpenVMS).  Tom Hastings was the architect who designed the original
> VAX/VMS ABI.  He was aware from the get-go that several programming
> languages had to be supported and he made sure that his design was
> general enough to allow programmers to write routines in the most
> suitable language for them, to mix and match modules written in
> different languages in the same program, and to easily make calls from
> one language to another.  It was a stroke of genius and I haven't seen
> its like in any other OS (several times I've wished it was there,
> though).

Thanks for mentioning this.  I think you had pointed this out some
months ago, but I had difficulty remembering the details of "who had
solved the ABI problem the right way a long time ago", but could not
remember enough of it to dredge it up even with repeated searches.

Unfortunately Google remains stymied even by the quite explicit terms

  "tom hastings" vax vms abi

...do you have a link to a white paper I could read?

I have an ecosystem in mind that might be receptive to the concept.

Regards,
Branden

[1]

  NAME
     0c, 1c, 2c, 5c, 6c, 7c, 8c, kc, qc, vc - C compilers
[...]
  DESCRIPTION

  These commands compile the named C files into object files for the
  corresponding architecture. If there are multiple C files, the
  compilers will attempt to keep $NPROC compilations running con
  currently.  Associated with each compiler is a string objtype, for
  example

  0c spim little-endian MIPS 3000 family
  1c 68000 Motorola MC68000
  2c 68020 Motorola MC68020
  5c arm little-endian ARM
  6c amd64 AMD64 and compatibles (e.g., Intel EM64T)
  7c alpha Digital Alpha APX
  8c 386 Intel i386, i486, Pentium, etc.
  kc sparc Sun SPARC
  qc power Power PC
  vc mips big-endian MIPS 3000 family

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[COFF] Weedhopper? (was: crt0 -- what's in that name?)

[Greg 'groggy' Lehey]

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On Monday, 12 June 2023 at 18:39:32 -0400, Clem Cole wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 12, 2023 at 5:39 PM G. Branden Robinson <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> It's an ill wind that blows a Fortran runtime using the same convention.
>
> Be careful there, weedhopper ...

Now there's a word I have never heard before.  Neither have my
dictionaries, and Google gets sidetracked.  What's the meaning and the
background?

On the other hand, I have heard of BSS and BES.  It was in the DDP-516
(basis for the IMP) assembler.  Is that how it found its way into
Unix?

Greg
--
Sent from my desktop computer.
Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key.
See complete headers for address and phone numbers.
This message is digitally signed.  If your Microsoft mail program
reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA.php

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[COFF] Re: Weedhopper? (was: crt0 -- what's in that name?)

[G. Branden Robinson]

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At 2023-06-13T09:57:08+1000, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
> On Monday, 12 June 2023 at 18:39:32 -0400, Clem Cole wrote:
> > On Mon, Jun 12, 2023 at 5:39 PM G. Branden Robinson <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> It's an ill wind that blows a Fortran runtime using the same convention.
> >
> > Be careful there, weedhopper ...
> 
> Now there's a word I have never heard before.  Neither have my
> dictionaries, and Google gets sidetracked.  What's the meaning and the
> background?

I interpreted it as a coinage based on the old _Kung Fu_ television
series (where David Carradine's youthful and callow character was called
"grasshopper" by his sensei), hybridized with a suggestion that, to
speak ill of Fortran, I must be stoned out of my gourd.  ;-)

Regards,
Branden

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[COFF] Re: Weedhopper? (was: crt0 -- what's in that name?)

[Clem Cole]

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On Mon, Jun 12, 2023 at 7:57 PM Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@lemis.com> wrote:

> On Monday, 12 June 2023 at 18:39:32 -0400, Clem Cole wrote:
> > On Mon, Jun 12, 2023 at 5:39 PM G. Branden Robinson <
> g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> It's an ill wind that blows a Fortran runtime using the same convention.
> >
> > Be careful there, weedhopper ...
>
> Now there's a word I have never heard before.  Neither have my
> dictionaries, and Google gets sidetracked.  What's the meaning and the
> background?
>

I was making a joke from those times -- sorry it fell flat [The Kung Fu
series that airs from 1972 to 1975, a young character is taught by an old
blind master, who he called "grasshopper."]

>
> On the other hand, I have heard of BSS and BES.  It was in the DDP-516 (basis
> for the IMP) assembler.  Is that how it found its way into Unix?
>
As I said, it was originally from the United Aircraft assembler and
released to the IBM SHARE community in the late 1950s, which Doug
verified.   As Paul said, in those days, you did not want to waste cycles
setting up memory if you did not need to, and security was not an issue, so
have the assembler/compiler reserve "block common"  after it loaded the
code and initialized data.  To younger programmers,  these machines
(including the variable S/360) do not have a stack. They used it as a
calling convention that saves things in what IBM called the "push down save
area."

Like Paul, while I learned assembler first on the S/360, I don't remember
if a BAL for TSS/360 directive called BSS, but I certainly remember being
taught about the idea of Block Storage and having it drilled into my brain
by my Kung Fu master at the time, Don Gregg.   I've now forgotten what it
did or the special rules for it. Still, I do remember that the APL system
had to be careful about what was in what 'SECT' and, early on, screwing
something up in one of my first assembler tweaks of the APL system and
getting an 'education' about the errors of my way by my master - thus being
taught the differences.😉

Clem
ᐧ

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[COFF] Re: Weedhopper? (was: crt0 -- what's in that name?)

[Clem Cole]

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On Mon, Jun 12, 2023 at 8:30 PM G. Branden Robinson <
g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:

> At 2023-06-13T09:57:08+1000, Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
> > On Monday, 12 June 2023 at 18:39:32 -0400, Clem Cole wrote:
> > > On Mon, Jun 12, 2023 at 5:39 PM G. Branden Robinson <
> g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > >> It's an ill wind that blows a Fortran runtime using the same
> convention.
> > >
> > > Be careful there, weedhopper ...
> >
> > Now there's a word I have never heard before.  Neither have my
> > dictionaries, and Google gets sidetracked.  What's the meaning and the
> > background?
>
> I interpreted it as a coinage based on the old _Kung Fu_ television
> series (where David Carradine's youthful and callow character was called
> "grasshopper" by his sensei), hybridized with a suggestion that, to
> speak ill of Fortran, I must be stoned out of my gourd.  ;-)
>
Ah, the intended audience did catch the reference -- well done.
ᐧ

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[COFF] Re: Weedhopper? (was: crt0 -- what's in that name?)

[Bakul Shah]

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On Jun 12, 2023, at 8:05 PM, Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
> 
> On Mon, Jun 12, 2023 at 7:57 PM Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog@lemis.com <mailto:grog@lemis.com>> wrote:
>> On Monday, 12 June 2023 at 18:39:32 -0400, Clem Cole wrote:
>> > On Mon, Jun 12, 2023 at 5:39 PM G. Branden Robinson <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com <mailto:g.branden.robinson@gmail.com>> wrote:
>> >
>> >> It's an ill wind that blows a Fortran runtime using the same convention.
>> >
>> > Be careful there, weedhopper ...
>> 
>> Now there's a word I have never heard before.  Neither have my
>> dictionaries, and Google gets sidetracked.  What's the meaning and the
>> background?

You missed your chance to say "Patience, Young Grasshopper!"

[I wonder if "Patience you must have, Young Padawan" has a connection to the above. Yoda must have watched Kung Fu!]

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[COFF] Re: [TUHS] Re: crt0 -- what's in that name?

[Paul Winalski]

On 6/12/23, G. Branden Robinson <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> To bang an old drum of mine, while Unix culture pats itself on the back
> for economizing keystrokes with an ad hoc compression scheme for every
> name in sight, it too often overlooks what discarded in pursuit of this
> form of minimality: clarity, lack of ambiguity, and ease of acquisition
> by newcomers.

IMO, one area where Unix is severely deficient is online help for the
novice or casual user.  man pages are fine if you already know the
command you want to use and just need to know details about options
and switches.  But man pages are utterly useless if your question is
"what command do I need to use to do X?"

The Unix problem of non-obvious command names is made worse by some of
the commands whose names are obscure in-jokes.  The worst offender is
probably the biff utility.  This is the command that lets you set
notifications for incoming email.  Why biff?  Because a friend of the
guy who wrote the utility had a dog named Biff who used to bark at the
mailman.

>
>> Most operating system ABIs, Unix included, don't have a formalized
>> mechanism for dealing with the differences between startup semantics
>> of various programming languages.  They deal with the problem in an
>> ad-hack fashion.  The one exception that I know of is VMS (now
>> OpenVMS).  Tom Hastings was the architect who designed the original
>> VAX/VMS ABI.  He was aware from the get-go that several programming
>> languages had to be supported and he made sure that his design was
>> general enough to allow programmers to write routines in the most
>> suitable language for them, to mix and match modules written in
>> different languages in the same program, and to easily make calls from
>> one language to another.  It was a stroke of genius and I haven't seen
>> its like in any other OS (several times I've wished it was there,
>> though).
>
> Thanks for mentioning this.  I think you had pointed this out some
> months ago, but I had difficulty remembering the details of "who had
> solved the ABI problem the right way a long time ago", but could not
> remember enough of it to dredge it up even with repeated searches.
>
> Unfortunately Google remains stymied even by the quite explicit terms

Try "openvms common language environment" in Google.  The Common
Language Environment (CLE) is the official name for the architectural
rules that facilitate multi-language programming.

VMS (officially OpenVMS; I hated that marketing name when it was first
proposed and I hate it now) is still alive and supported by a company
called VMS Software, Inc. (VSI).  Here is a pointer to their document
OpenVMS Programming Concepts, Volume II, which describes the CLE in
detail:

https://vmssoftware.com/docs/VSI_PROGRAM_CONCEPTS_VOL_II.pdf

-Paul W.

[COFF] Re: UNIX and its users - new or old

[Clem Cole]

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On Mon, Jun 12, 2023 at 7:50 PM G. Branden Robinson <
g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:

> The BSD advocates I knew back in the day suggested that this was my fault
> for not locating and apprenticing myself to such a master;
> the guild mentality was, and in some ways still is, powerful there.
>
This is a fair point and is actually true of almost any system or, for that
matter social setting, if you have a guide it's a lot easier to know what
to do or fool people into thinking you do; Liza Doolittle style.

>
> To bang an old drum of mine, while Unix culture pats itself on the back for
> economizing keystrokes with an ad hoc compression scheme for every
> name in sight, it too often overlooks what discarded in pursuit of this form
> of minimality: clarity, lack of ambiguity, and ease of acquisition by
> newcomers.
>
Again fair - which is why I think losing things like the old UNIX (I think
bwk originated) 'learn system' from the stock releases is a little sad.   I
used to tell newcomers - to spend an AM with learn and go through the
files/more files/vi scripts and then come back to me, and I'll try to help
you.

My line was that UNIX always had a more difficult learning curve than, say
GUI based systems (or even some of the old DEC ones likes TOPS or VMS), but
once you learned the tools and ideas, it was much simpler to use - made
more sense (to me certainly). [Teach someone to fish, *vs.* give them one
idea].

But as you point out, that only works if you have someone(s) to ask.


>
> ... when Bell Labs got the Blit, the limitations that motivated the
> original terseness were not only not discarded, but
> retained and doubled down on.
>
Again a fair observation -- however,
making_your_switches_so_verbose_no_one_can_remember_much_less_type_them_gnu
style is just as bad.

Developing "good taste" is sometimes difficult.   I'll not defend the "Unix
room culture" or the later Plan9 folks (many of whom are my friends) - but
I also get it. They were making something for themselves.

And here is where it gets tricky -- too many systems are designed to be the
solution to too make problems by trying to learn and correct all past sins
(Brook's "second-system effect") but fail because no one cares/uses them.
The economics of switching are not there.

Frankly, when you build for yourself or, better yet, use what Tektronix
called the "next bench" [1] idea, you often can find that happy
compromise.   Simple enough to learn but not a burden to use.

At least APL chose sigils that were tough to confuse with other things.
>
True, but you have not lived until someone brings a yellow piece of ASR33
paper into your office, and they are using the APL replacement operations
and telling you this is this life's work -- 200 lines of APL - they think
there is something wrong with the system.   You have to decode the program
and tell them they used the wrong operator. ...  or better, they actually
were right but you can not reproduce the error without their program and
datasets.

Best wishes,
Clem

[1] Tektronix's "Next Bench" - was a simple idea.  They were an
instrumentation company made up of EE primarily.  Everyone had work
benches, not desks, to work on their projects.   The idea was if you saw a
colleague the "next bench over" struggling with solving a problem and you
could think of a tool or test to help them solve it, chances are pretty
good other people were having the same issue.  So, if you make it easy to
use and become available, you will have a product and it is likely to be
popular.  The key points: solve a problem, is easy to use, and made
available.

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[COFF] Re: [TUHS] Re: crt0 -- what's in that name?

[segaloco via COFF]

> But man pages are utterly useless if your question is
> "what command do I need to use to do X?"

The permuted index is surprisingly useful in this regard but isn't always there in manpage sources, you'd have to generate it.  There are the technical memoranda too, starting with V6 those were distributed with the manpages from what I know.  Research and BSD kept them packed in to the end but USG took them out starting with System V presumably to make more paper documentation sales.  The technical papers still hold a lot of value imo and render much of the literature out there redundant.  They're my preferred source of "how do I do xyz" even if 1000 books have been published on the same subject.

- Matt G.

[COFF] Re: [TUHS] Re: crt0 -- what's in that name?

[Clem Cole]

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On Tue, Jun 13, 2023 at 1:05 PM segaloco via COFF <coff@tuhs.org> wrote:

> The permuted index is surprisingly useful in this regard but isn't always
> there in manpage sources, you'd have to generate it.
>
Indeed.  @Doug do you know who was the brilliant person that came up with
that tool and built the first UNIX PTX? I always felt they should be lauded
for that piece of work!

It was something that when I first learned about UNIX that I did like.   I
was primarily coming from TOPS and TSS, and UNIX was strange when I first
saw it -- cat instead of print or type, of course, being the first
roadblock.   But when I found the PTX was one of the first times that
"light dawned on marble head."

I saw UNIX long before "learn" was released, but I certainly had helped
enough new users by the time it was available that the "learn" tool, a
printed copy of the man pages, and PTX were where I told "newbies" to start.
ᐧ

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[COFF] Re: UNIX and its users - new or old

[Dan Cross]

On Tue, Jun 13, 2023 at 1:03 PM Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 12, 2023 at 7:50 PM G. Branden Robinson <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:
>> The BSD advocates I knew back in the day suggested that this was my fault for not locating and apprenticing myself to such a master;
>> the guild mentality was, and in some ways still is, powerful there.
>
> This is a fair point and is actually true of almost any system or, for that matter social setting, if you have a guide it's a lot easier to know what to do or fool people into thinking you do; Liza Doolittle style.

Forgive me, Clem, but I'm going to push back on this a little bit. The
TL;DR of my position is, "guides, yes; guilds, no."

I agree with the idea that having a friendly guide to help one
acclimate to a system is really useful: provided that guide is
actually friendly and helpful. I find that the interaction works best
when people regard each other as peers, with one imparting specific
knowledge to the other to fill in gaps in the latter's experience. I
find it works very poorly when one side is arrogant and belittling
towards the other. I believe that the "guild" mentality encourages the
latter behavior, with an "in-group" that demands unearned respect.
Mutual respect works much better.

Moreover, adoption of this guild model (really, the mentality) with
partitioning people into groups of "apprentices", "journeymen" and
"masters" has allowed for the rise of charlatans and cranks across the
industry. Consider people like Robert Martin: he's become known as a
"master software craftsman", has published many books that sell well,
and speaks at conferences across the industry. And yet, near as I can
tell, he hasn't actually written all that much software; certainly not
much that is publicly available. What is there shows that he is a
middling programmer at best; certainly not worthy of the accolades
heaped on him.

Same with people like Allen Hollub, who's biggest claim to fame seems
to be writing a book on compilers that is mostly material regurgitated
from the Dragon Book (but in poorly-written C), and who infamously
rails against things like issue trackers (seriously: tell me you've
never worked on a big project without telling me that you've never
worked on a big project). Then there's the rest of the agile
influencer cult; mostly more of the same.

>> To bang an old drum of mine, while Unix culture pats itself on the back for economizing keystrokes with an ad hoc compression scheme for every
>> name in sight, it too often overlooks what discarded in pursuit of this form of minimality: clarity, lack of ambiguity, and ease of acquisition by newcomers.
>
> Again fair - which is why I think losing things like the old UNIX (I think bwk originated) 'learn system' from the stock releases is a little sad.   I used to tell newcomers - to spend an AM with learn and go through the files/more files/vi scripts and then come back to me, and I'll try to help you.

There is a qualitative difference here. Being willing to mentor and
(importantly) providing access to learning materials is very different
from being disdainful for those who don't already "have a clue". Being
friendly and helpful is also qualitatively different from demanding
groveling behavior from the "apprentice" caste before they can be
allowed some scraps from the table. I argue that the "guild" mentality
leads to the latter.

> My line was that UNIX always had a more difficult learning curve than, say GUI based systems (or even some of the old DEC ones likes TOPS or VMS), but once you learned the tools and ideas, it was much simpler to use - made more sense (to me certainly). [Teach someone to fish, vs. give them one idea].
>
> But as you point out, that only works if you have someone(s) to ask.

...and that person is not a jerk to you for daring to ask a question
they don't already know the answer to. That, I think, is the
fundamental difference that G. Branden was trying to highlight.

        - Dan C.

[COFF] Re: UNIX and its users - new or old

[Clem Cole]

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Dan, I suspect that we are more in agreement than you might recognize.
 Your *Guide vs. Guild* is spot on.  I don't have a problem asking
questions, and as you know, I answer many newbie questions WRT SIMH,
PiDP-x, and the like, as well as ask questions about stuff I am not
familiar with.   I have had an issue with a questioneer when the reply to
the question is: "*Here is how to learn the answer* " (*i.e*.*, teach the
questioneer how to find the solution),* but if said party is unwilling to
do the background work (or the suggested work from the answer) - but just
wants to be spoon-fed for that particular issue so they can move on,
instead of* learning how to solve* it and hopefully the next issue
themselves.

Someone asking a question is fine with me.   And answer from me, or you may
offer a small reminder of *here is how to learn*.   Asking -- "*Folks, I
can't be the first person that ran into this ... what can I read'/where can
I learn/is there a tutorial/book, etc. that explains/has an example on how
to do X*" is a perfectly fine question (we get them on simh all the time as
an example).   Even "*I'm stuck, and I'm getting this result when I try ...*"
 So *h**ow you ask* your question helps, of course, that is, please try to
demonstrate that you have done some work already but are currently running
into a dead end.

That said, as you point out, *how you answer* is just as important.   RTFM
or see-figure-one are not ok answers - tempting as they may seem to be.
 But I think it is ok to say: "*If you look here ... read this
book/document, you should be able to figure it out*"  is a fair reply and
not acting like the "Guild" -- that, to me, is guiding.    But if the same
user just asked the same question on a different list when they were
pointed to on how to find that answer, that is not the proper answer.  The
trick for the OP is to try to do your homework and show how/why you are
stuck - what don't you understand - so you can be guided and demonstrate
you actually want to learn.

WRT to respect each other and look at each other as peers.  Amen.

For all my joking, I think it's great that you, Branden, et al. have taken
the reins from folks like me and are keeping alive the ideas and techniques
we started years before. I thank you both (and the others out there I have
not directly recognized) for your efforts, and I think you two both do
learn and look to lists like COFF and TUHS as amazing resources where you
can both learn and contribute (as a peer).  Note I learn from both lists
all the time.   But I do reserve the right to sometimes ask as a master,
passing on knowledge (like why ignoring/denigrating Fortran is at your
peril).  I did try to do it humorously, and I'm even happier that Branden
caught my probably bad/poor taste - Kung Fu joke.

Respectfully,
Clem
ᐧ

On Wed, Jun 14, 2023 at 9:34 AM Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Jun 13, 2023 at 1:03 PM Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
> > On Mon, Jun 12, 2023 at 7:50 PM G. Branden Robinson <
> g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:
> >> The BSD advocates I knew back in the day suggested that this was my
> fault for not locating and apprenticing myself to such a master;
> >> the guild mentality was, and in some ways still is, powerful there.
> >
> > This is a fair point and is actually true of almost any system or, for
> that matter social setting, if you have a guide it's a lot easier to know
> what to do or fool people into thinking you do; Liza Doolittle style.
>
> Forgive me, Clem, but I'm going to push back on this a little bit. The
> TL;DR of my position is, "guides, yes; guilds, no."
>
> I agree with the idea that having a friendly guide to help one
> acclimate to a system is really useful: provided that guide is
> actually friendly and helpful. I find that the interaction works best
> when people regard each other as peers, with one imparting specific
> knowledge to the other to fill in gaps in the latter's experience. I
> find it works very poorly when one side is arrogant and belittling
> towards the other. I believe that the "guild" mentality encourages the
> latter behavior, with an "in-group" that demands unearned respect.
> Mutual respect works much better.
>
> Moreover, adoption of this guild model (really, the mentality) with
> partitioning people into groups of "apprentices", "journeymen" and
> "masters" has allowed for the rise of charlatans and cranks across the
> industry. Consider people like Robert Martin: he's become known as a
> "master software craftsman", has published many books that sell well,
> and speaks at conferences across the industry. And yet, near as I can
> tell, he hasn't actually written all that much software; certainly not
> much that is publicly available. What is there shows that he is a
> middling programmer at best; certainly not worthy of the accolades
> heaped on him.
>
> Same with people like Allen Hollub, who's biggest claim to fame seems
> to be writing a book on compilers that is mostly material regurgitated
> from the Dragon Book (but in poorly-written C), and who infamously
> rails against things like issue trackers (seriously: tell me you've
> never worked on a big project without telling me that you've never
> worked on a big project). Then there's the rest of the agile
> influencer cult; mostly more of the same.
>
> >> To bang an old drum of mine, while Unix culture pats itself on the back
> for economizing keystrokes with an ad hoc compression scheme for every
> >> name in sight, it too often overlooks what discarded in pursuit of this
> form of minimality: clarity, lack of ambiguity, and ease of acquisition by
> newcomers.
> >
> > Again fair - which is why I think losing things like the old UNIX (I
> think bwk originated) 'learn system' from the stock releases is a little
> sad.   I used to tell newcomers - to spend an AM with learn and go through
> the files/more files/vi scripts and then come back to me, and I'll try to
> help you.
>
> There is a qualitative difference here. Being willing to mentor and
> (importantly) providing access to learning materials is very different
> from being disdainful for those who don't already "have a clue". Being
> friendly and helpful is also qualitatively different from demanding
> groveling behavior from the "apprentice" caste before they can be
> allowed some scraps from the table. I argue that the "guild" mentality
> leads to the latter.
>
> > My line was that UNIX always had a more difficult learning curve than,
> say GUI based systems (or even some of the old DEC ones likes TOPS or VMS),
> but once you learned the tools and ideas, it was much simpler to use - made
> more sense (to me certainly). [Teach someone to fish, vs. give them one
> idea].
> >
> > But as you point out, that only works if you have someone(s) to ask.
>
> ...and that person is not a jerk to you for daring to ask a question
> they don't already know the answer to. That, I think, is the
> fundamental difference that G. Branden was trying to highlight.
>
>         - Dan C.
>

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[COFF] Re: UNIX and its users - new or old

[Dan Cross]

On Wed, Jun 14, 2023 at 11:40 AM Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
> Dan, I suspect that we are more in agreement than you might recognize.   Your Guide vs. Guild is spot on.  I don't have a problem asking questions, and as you know, I answer many newbie questions WRT SIMH, PiDP-x, and the like, as well as ask questions about stuff I am not familiar with.

Indeed! And I apologize if it came across as if I were directing any
criticism at you (or anyone else on this list); that wasn't my
intention at all. Really, I only wanted to point out a subtlety in
what (I think) G. Branden was saying that I thought was
(inadvertently) overlooked.

> I have had an issue with a questioneer when the reply to the question is: "Here is how to learn the answer " (i.e., teach the questioneer how to find the solution), but if said party is unwilling to do the background work (or the suggested work from the answer) - but just wants to be spoon-fed for that particular issue so they can move on, instead of learning how to solve it and hopefully the next issue themselves.

I have a problem with this, too, but I think that's a bit orthogonal
to what was under discussion. Of course, in any of these interactions,
one hopes that the other party actually wants to learn and is willing
to put in the effort!

> Someone asking a question is fine with me.   And answer from me, or you may offer a small reminder of here is how to learn.   Asking -- "Folks, I can't be the first person that ran into this ... what can I read'/where can I learn/is there a tutorial/book, etc. that explains/has an example on how to do X" is a perfectly fine question (we get them on simh all the time as an example).   Even "I'm stuck, and I'm getting this result when I try ..."   So how you ask your question helps, of course, that is, please try to demonstrate that you have done some work already but are currently running into a dead end.

Absolutely! I'm sure we have all run into the issue of, "I've got a
problem and simply don't know where to start: what's your advice?"
before and I try (and, I admit, sometimes fail) at being receptive to
that for others as well. It can be hard to ask, because it can feel
embarrassing, but we've all been there before.

> That said, as you point out, how you answer is just as important.   RTFM or see-figure-one are not ok answers - tempting as they may seem to be.   But I think it is ok to say: "If you look here ... read this book/document, you should be able to figure it out"  is a fair reply and not acting like the "Guild" -- that, to me, is guiding.    But if the same user just asked the same question on a different list when they were pointed to on how to find that answer, that is not the proper answer.  The trick for the OP is to try to do your homework and show how/why you are stuck - what don't you understand - so you can be guided and demonstrate you actually want to learn.

Absolutely.

> WRT to respect each other and look at each other as peers.  Amen.

Indeed. And I'd like to reiterate that I generally feel like this list
and this community is very good at that.

However, the charlatan effect with the Martins, Holubs, Jeffries, etc,
of the world is very real. Curiously, Holub is listed as a technical
reviewer on K&R2! (No idea how that happened....)

> For all my joking, I think it's great that you, Branden, et al. have taken the reins from folks like me and are keeping alive the ideas and techniques we started years before. I thank you both (and the others out there I have not directly recognized) for your efforts, and I think you two both do learn and look to lists like COFF and TUHS as amazing resources where you can both learn and contribute (as a peer).  Note I learn from both lists all the time.   But I do reserve the right to sometimes ask as a master, passing on knowledge (like why ignoring/denigrating Fortran is at your peril).  I did try to do it humorously, and I'm even happier that Branden caught my probably bad/poor taste - Kung Fu joke.

That's really kind of you to say, Clem. Honestly, I didn't catch that
it was a weed joke (despite "weedhopper" literally containing the word
"weed") until G. Branden pointed it out. I guess that says something
about the kinda rock I live under these days....

        - Dan C.

[COFF] Re: UNIX and its users - new or old

[Adam Thornton]

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On Wed, Jun 14, 2023 at 3:14 PM Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com> wrote:

> That's really kind of you to say, Clem. Honestly, I didn't catch that
> it was a weed joke (despite "weedhopper" literally containing the word
> "weed") until G. Branden pointed it out. I guess that says something
> about the kinda rock I live under these days....
>
>
>
So that'd be a crack rock then?

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[COFF] Re: UNIX and its users - new or old

[Dan Cross]

On Thu, Jun 15, 2023 at 12:20 AM Adam Thornton <athornton@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 14, 2023 at 3:14 PM Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com> wrote:
>> That's really kind of you to say, Clem. Honestly, I didn't catch that
>> it was a weed joke (despite "weedhopper" literally containing the word
>> "weed") until G. Branden pointed it out. I guess that says something
>> about the kinda rock I live under these days....
>
> So that'd be a crack rock then?

Don't judge me....

        - Dan C.