From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.2 (2018-09-13) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.7 required=5.0 tests=HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS, MAILING_LIST_MULTI,PLING_QUERY,RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.2 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (minnie.tuhs.org [45.79.103.53]) by inbox.vuxu.org (OpenSMTPD) with ESMTP id 8feb3928 for ; Thu, 10 Oct 2019 21:34:38 +0000 (UTC) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 970E09B902; Fri, 11 Oct 2019 07:34:37 +1000 (AEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BA0999B853; Fri, 11 Oct 2019 07:34:29 +1000 (AEST) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 5C7AD9B87C; Fri, 11 Oct 2019 07:34:28 +1000 (AEST) Received: from mcvoy.com (mcvoy.com [192.169.23.250]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 013F69B8C1; Fri, 11 Oct 2019 07:34:28 +1000 (AEST) Received: by mcvoy.com (Postfix, from userid 3546) id A65C535E12C; Thu, 10 Oct 2019 14:34:27 -0700 (PDT) Date: Thu, 10 Oct 2019 14:34:27 -0700 From: Larry McVoy To: Warren Toomey Message-ID: <20191010213427.GE5593@mcvoy.com> References: <20191010205546.GA29154@minnie.tuhs.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20191010205546.GA29154@minnie.tuhs.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.24 (2015-08-30) Subject: Re: [TUHS] What was your "Aha, Unix!" moment? X-BeenThere: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.26 Precedence: list List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Cc: tuhs@tuhs.org Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org Sender: "TUHS" On Fri, Oct 11, 2019 at 06:55:46AM +1000, Warren Toomey wrote: > So I'll kick off another thread. What was your "ahah" moment when you > first saw that Unix was special, especially compared to the systems you'd > previously used? Unix was pretty much the first thing I used. I did regress to CPM Z80 based machine because 40-60 users on a 1Mhz (I think) VAX was crazy slow, even though it had disk and I think 4MB of ram, the 128K 4mhz z80 with floppies was faster. I wrote assembly versions of ls, cp, mv, rm, etc - assembly so that I could cram the program into a 512 byte sector (both for speed of loading as well as for small size). The aha moment for me was one of the many times I was logged into slovax (an 11/750 that had the BSD source on it) reading popen.c and got to the point where it forked a process. It blew my mind, here I am in libc and it's creating processes for me. I just didn't expect that but was struck by the thought "huh, these Unix guys don't fool around, they use the abstractions they advertise". I expected something like Windows spawn or some VMS complex thing, I sure as heck didn't expect fork and exec, shows how naive I was at the time. Fun times.