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* Re: [TUHS] Tech Sq elevator (Was: screen editors)
@ 2020-01-12 13:43 Doug McIlroy
  2020-01-12 16:56 ` Warner Losh
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 21+ messages in thread
From: Doug McIlroy @ 2020-01-12 13:43 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

Mention of elevators at Tech Square reminds me of visiting there
to see the Lisp machine. I was struck by cultural differences.

At the time we were using Jerqs, where multiple windows ran
like multiple time-sharing sessions. To me that behavior was a
no-brainer. Surprisingly, Lisp-machine windows didn't work that
way; only the user-selected active window got processor time.

The biggest difference was emacs, which no one used at Bell
Labs. Emacs, of course was native to the Lisp machine and
provided a powerful and smoothly extensible environment. For
example, its reflective ability made it easy to display a
list of its commands. "Call elevator" stood out amng mundane
programmering actions like cut, paste and run.

After scrolling through the command list, I wondered how long
it was and asked to have it counted. Easy, I thought, just
pass it to a wc-like program. But "just pass it" and "wc-like"
were not givens as they are in Unix culture.  It took several
minutes for the gurus to do it--without leaving emacs, if I
remember right.

Doug

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 21+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2020-01-22  7:30 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 21+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2020-01-12 13:43 [TUHS] Tech Sq elevator (Was: screen editors) Doug McIlroy
2020-01-12 16:56 ` Warner Losh
2020-01-12 17:21   ` markus schnalke
2020-01-12 20:25   ` Kevin Bowling
2020-01-12 20:32     ` Larry McVoy
2020-01-12 20:34     ` Jon Steinhart
2020-01-12 20:40       ` Kevin Bowling
2020-01-12 20:44         ` Jon Steinhart
2020-01-12 21:03           ` Kevin Bowling
2020-01-12 21:37             ` [TUHS] Tech Sq elevator (Was: screen editors) [ really I think efficiency now ] Jon Steinhart
     [not found]               ` <CAEoi9W4fXLaTRM1mv4wnVbifCFBEw_iKL9cds8ds-FBRTwM-=g@mail.gmail.com>
     [not found]                 ` <CAEoi9W6LedGGjWPO=ZgZzVdGLqs8drhqcWkvA_DfKTOtMDgegQ@mail.gmail.com>
2020-01-13 23:46                   ` Dan Cross
2020-01-14 23:17                     ` Kevin Bowling
2020-01-18 15:45                     ` Michael Parson
2020-01-18 18:45                       ` Jon Steinhart
2020-01-18 18:59                         ` Michael Parson
2020-01-18 20:31                           ` Adam Thornton
2020-01-21 21:57                       ` Derek Fawcus
2020-01-22  7:21                         ` arnold
2020-01-22  7:29                           ` Tyler Adams
2020-01-12 21:41           ` [TUHS] Tech Sq elevator (Was: screen editors) Bakul Shah
2020-01-12 21:47             ` Jon Steinhart

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