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 e07a0be0 for ; Sat, 12 Oct 2019 14:45:00 +0000 (UTC) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 4F5D49BCDD; Sun, 13 Oct 2019 00:44:59 +1000 (AEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A46689B8C4; Sun, 13 Oct 2019 00:44:43 +1000 (AEST) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 8E9DE9B8C4; Sun, 13 Oct 2019 00:44:41 +1000 (AEST) X-Greylist: delayed 418 seconds by postgrey-1.36 at minnie.tuhs.org; Sun, 13 Oct 2019 00:44:40 AEST Received: from outgoing.mit.edu (outgoing-auth-1.mit.edu [18.9.28.11]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id B01E09B8A5 for ; Sun, 13 Oct 2019 00:44:40 +1000 (AEST) Received: from callcc.thunk.org (velvel11604.v.subnet.rcn.com [207.237.165.163]) (authenticated bits=0) (User authenticated as tytso@ATHENA.MIT.EDU) by outgoing.mit.edu (8.14.7/8.12.4) with ESMTP id x9CEbYSN012285 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 bits=256 verify=NOT); Sat, 12 Oct 2019 10:37:34 -0400 Received: by callcc.thunk.org (Postfix, from userid 15806) id C588942045A; Sat, 12 Oct 2019 10:37:33 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 12 Oct 2019 10:37:33 -0400 From: "Theodore Y. Ts'o" To: Larry McVoy Message-ID: <20191012143733.GE16225@mit.edu> References: <20191010205546.GA29154@minnie.tuhs.org> <3d9ff257-8505-8792-abcf-fd44846b58f1@lycos.com> <20191012030155.GG3558@mcvoy.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <20191012030155.GG3558@mcvoy.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.10.1 (2018-07-13) 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@minnie.tuhs.org Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org Sender: "TUHS" On Fri, Oct 11, 2019 at 08:01:55PM -0700, Larry McVoy wrote: > If you were on some 300 baud dial up modem, ed made tons of sense. You > had a mental picture of the file in your head, you didn't need to see > all of it in real time, that was wasteful. ed let you see as much as > you needed and as little as was productive. And it worked without > termcap. ed rocks, it's yet another little program that does what > it needs to do and no more. > > ed was like a lot of stuff that Bell Labs did that dated back to the > days when getting a print out took a day or so.... ed isn't all that different from most of the text based editors from that era. My first text based editor was "edit" from the PDP-8's 4k disk monitor system. The "monitor" was located in the high 128 (12-bit) word page of the PDP-8's 4k core memory, and the editor and its text buffer had to fit in the bottom 3968 words, which meant you had to read and edit your program file in small chunks[1]. [1] https://www.pdp8.net/asr33/dms_session.shtml The 4k disk monitor pre-dated Unix by two years, and similar text editors were part of the PDP-15 and PDP-11 operating systems from Digital. Many of the edito commands that I remember from using ASR-35 connected to my Dad's PDP-8/i are the same as what /bin/ed. Fortunately people weren't trying to copyright user interfaces back in the 1960's..... - Ted