From: arnold@skeeve.com
To: wkt@tuhs.org, tuhs@tuhs.org
Subject: Re: [TUHS] What was your "Aha, Unix!" moment?
Date: Sun, 13 Oct 2019 09:33:09 -0600 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <201910131533.x9DFX9Ev028135@freefriends.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20191010205546.GA29154@minnie.tuhs.org>
Warren Toomey <wkt@tuhs.org> 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?
I first met Unix in the fall of 1980, after a two-year hiatus from
college. Up to then, I'd only used Sperry Univac mainframes and a
weird Xerox computer (only a little) and punch cards on an IBM 1130.
In the interim, the college gave the undergrads access to a PDP-11/70
at the med school running IS/1 - Interactive Systems' commercial version
of V6. No access for us to source code, though. :-(
I/O redirection and space separated arguments were really cool, as well
as pipelines. Light years ahead of anything else.
More or less simultaneously, someone lent me their copies of "Software Tools"
and "The C Programming Language" (which I immediately got my own copies
of). Software Tools opened my eyes to the whole Unix philosophy.
K&R was so dense that my head was swimming after the first read. I then
read it through again, and everything pretty much clicked.
I decided pretty quickly during the course of that first year with Unix
that I only wanted to work with C and Unix. Both were so far ahead of
everything else...
Arnold
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2019-10-13 15:33 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 122+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2019-10-10 20:55 Warren Toomey
2019-10-10 21:11 ` SPC
2019-10-10 21:25 ` Jim Capp
2019-10-10 21:33 ` greg travis
2019-10-10 21:13 ` Michael Parson
2019-10-10 21:15 ` Matt Rudge
2019-10-10 21:31 ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2019-10-10 21:34 ` Larry McVoy
2019-10-10 23:10 ` Seth J. Morabito
2019-10-10 23:23 ` Brian L. Stuart
2019-10-10 23:28 ` George Michaelson
2019-10-10 23:35 ` Bakul Shah
2019-10-10 23:49 ` David
2019-10-11 1:44 ` Gregg Levine
2019-10-11 1:45 ` Gregg Levine
2019-10-11 10:55 ` Leah Neukirchen
2019-10-11 12:04 ` Tyler Adams
2019-10-13 19:46 ` Peter Jeremy
2019-10-14 2:13 ` Lawrence Stewart
2019-10-14 2:32 ` Rico Pajarola
2019-10-14 9:49 ` Michael Kjörling
2019-10-14 18:36 ` Nemo Nusquam
2019-10-14 21:10 ` Jim Geist
2019-10-14 22:22 ` Warren Toomey
2019-10-14 22:56 ` Arthur Krewat
2019-10-14 23:44 ` Jim Geist
2019-10-14 23:47 ` Adam Thornton
2019-10-14 23:54 ` Arthur Krewat
2019-10-15 0:03 ` Henry Bent
2019-10-14 23:54 ` Ronald Natalie
2019-10-15 0:04 ` Arthur Krewat
2019-10-15 0:06 ` Ronald Natalie
2019-10-15 0:27 ` Arthur Krewat
2019-10-15 0:07 ` George Michaelson
2019-10-15 0:10 ` Larry McVoy
2019-10-15 0:27 ` [TUHS] Supercomputer UNIX (was Aga moments) Ronald Natalie
2019-10-15 0:33 ` [TUHS] Supercomputer UNIX (was Aha moments) Ronald Natalie
2019-10-14 23:52 ` [TUHS] What was your "Aha, Unix!" moment? Arthur Krewat
2019-10-11 12:53 ` KatolaZ
2019-10-11 16:44 ` Pete Wright
2019-10-11 17:13 ` Jim Geist
2019-10-11 17:20 ` Larry McVoy
2019-10-11 17:40 ` Jim Capp
2019-10-11 17:48 ` Larry W. Cashdollar via TUHS
2019-10-11 21:56 ` Tomasz Rola
2019-10-12 2:41 ` ricercar
2019-10-12 3:01 ` Larry McVoy
2019-10-12 14:37 ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2019-10-12 16:12 ` David
2019-10-12 17:59 ` Adam Thornton
2019-10-12 19:10 ` Jon Forrest
2019-10-13 21:45 ` Steve Johnson
2019-10-14 0:36 ` Jon Forrest
2019-10-14 2:08 ` Lawrence Stewart
2019-10-16 13:29 ` Pierre DAVID
2019-10-12 3:23 ` Richard Salz
2019-10-12 3:34 ` Larry McVoy
2019-10-12 21:32 ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2019-10-12 8:55 ` Wesley Parish
2019-10-12 10:17 ` Naveen Nathan
2019-10-12 11:54 ` markus schnalke
2019-10-12 19:33 ` Michael Kjörling
2019-10-12 22:38 ` Gregg Levine
2019-10-13 1:37 ` Dan Cross
2019-10-13 15:00 ` Robert Brockway
2019-10-13 15:33 ` arnold [this message]
2019-10-13 15:41 ` Larry McVoy
2019-10-13 15:47 ` David Potesta
2019-10-18 1:49 ` Dave Horsfall
2019-10-18 12:07 ` Ronald Natalie
2019-10-21 16:16 ` Dario Niedermann
2019-10-23 5:13 ` Gilles Gravier
2019-10-23 6:19 ` Adam Thornton
2019-10-23 15:08 ` Arthur Krewat
2019-10-23 15:11 ` Larry McVoy
2019-10-23 15:26 ` Arrigo Triulzi
2019-10-23 15:33 ` Dan Cross
2019-10-23 16:19 ` Arthur Krewat
2019-10-23 15:17 ` Richard Salz
2019-10-23 15:22 ` Arrigo Triulzi
2019-10-23 16:45 ` Will Senn
2019-10-23 22:19 ` Adam Thornton
2019-10-24 17:32 ` Tom Ivar Helbekkmo via TUHS
2019-10-26 0:33 ` Dave Horsfall
2019-10-25 20:58 ` John S Quarterman
2019-10-25 22:11 ` Will Senn
2019-10-26 0:57 ` William Corcoran
2019-10-12 4:42 Doug McIlroy
2019-10-12 6:12 ` Adam Thornton
2019-10-12 10:05 ` Steve Nickolas
2019-10-12 12:49 ` Doug McIlroy
2019-10-12 14:26 ` Steve Nickolas
2019-10-12 13:55 Noel Chiappa
2019-10-12 14:51 ` Ronald Natalie
2019-10-13 1:57 Jon Steinhart
2019-10-13 3:45 Rudi Blom
2019-10-13 16:07 Noel Chiappa
2019-10-13 16:25 ` Richard Salz
2019-10-14 15:32 Doug McIlroy
2019-10-15 8:42 ` Thomas Paulsen
2019-10-14 16:45 Noel Chiappa
2019-10-15 0:28 Pat Barron
2019-10-15 1:19 ` Andrew Warkentin
2019-10-15 4:06 ` Warner Losh
2019-10-16 14:39 Doug McIlroy
2019-10-20 19:25 Norman Wilson
2019-10-20 20:12 ` Sean Dwyer
2019-10-21 2:31 ` Ken Thompson via TUHS
2019-10-21 2:37 ` Warren Toomey
2019-10-22 5:25 ` Peter Jeremy
2019-10-22 6:29 ` Sean Dwyer
2019-10-21 2:40 ` Bakul Shah
2019-10-21 2:45 ` Larry McVoy
2019-10-21 10:45 ` jason-tuhs
2019-10-21 11:55 ` William Corcoran
2019-10-22 5:19 ` Adam Thornton
2019-10-21 12:10 Noel Chiappa
2019-10-21 16:50 ` Angelo Papenhoff
2019-10-21 12:34 Noel Chiappa
2019-10-22 13:36 Noel Chiappa
2019-10-22 14:22 ` Abhinav Rajagopalan
2019-10-22 20:08 ` Warren Toomey
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