From: Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com>
To: Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com>
Cc: TUHS main list <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] tangential unix question: whatever happened to NeWS?
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 2021 09:25:31 -0800 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <20210125172531.GP32503@mcvoy.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CAEoi9W4TMh=SSrk=pqprark7+ctvZLsbW8h00pf31KbtUAy_CQ@mail.gmail.com>
On Mon, Jan 25, 2021 at 11:37:25AM -0500, Dan Cross wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 25, 2021 at 11:05 AM Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:
> > On Mon, Jan 25, 2021 at 10:55:34AM -0500, Richard Salz wrote:
> > > Osterhout's Tk was beyond amazing.
> >
> > Still is, really. So far as I know, nobody has come up with anything
> > better.
>
> The Inferno operating system that was essentially a commercialization of
> plan9, implemented Tk with the Limbo programming language (which in many
> ways is perhaps the most direct ancestor of Go). That was neat to play
> with. Too bad it didn't have a lot of success.
We did something similar, I hated Tcl so much I paid a friend to make
a compiler for a very C like language that compiled to Tcl byte codes.
It's really what I'd like to see C evolve to:
http://little-lang.org
> > It had no XDR because it was "reader makes it right" and datatypes
> > > were tagged.
> >
> > That's the first I've heard of that and I really like it. Most of the
> > time, you are on a network of machines that are the same, so why have
> > a network byte order, reader makes it right will just work. Neat.
>
> I guess I don't quite understand that. I can get how it works for simple
> data types (integers, floating point numbers, perhaps strings) but it seems
> like it breaks down pretty quickly for anything with a more complex
> representation (structures with multiple members, for instance; how does
> one deal with padding, etc?).
Yeah, good points and I suppose that is why Sun did network byte order.
It's still appealing to have reader make right if you can do it, though
with todays out of order CPUs providing a pretty high instructions
per cycle maybe it just doesn't matter. There is a paper waiting to
be written.
--lm
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2021-01-25 17:25 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 71+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2021-01-24 16:14 ron minnich
2021-01-24 16:24 ` Michael Kjörling
2021-01-24 17:04 ` Clem Cole
2021-01-24 18:36 ` Larry McVoy
2021-01-24 20:39 ` Ronald Natalie
2021-01-24 20:54 ` Larry McVoy
2021-01-24 21:01 ` Ronald Natalie
2021-01-24 23:38 ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
2021-01-25 0:18 ` Larry McVoy
2021-01-25 0:36 ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
2021-01-25 0:41 ` Larry McVoy
2021-01-24 20:45 ` Jon Steinhart
2021-01-24 21:11 ` Larry McVoy
2021-01-24 21:14 ` Jon Steinhart
2021-01-24 21:22 ` [TUHS] Apollo (was NeWS) Ronald Natalie
2021-01-24 21:25 ` [TUHS] tangential unix question: whatever happened to NeWS? Larry McVoy
2021-01-24 22:53 ` Dan Cross
2021-01-24 23:33 ` Jon Steinhart
2021-01-25 0:11 ` Al Kossow
2021-01-25 0:21 ` Jon Steinhart
2021-01-25 14:38 ` Clem Cole
2021-01-25 15:31 ` Al Kossow
2021-01-25 15:55 ` Richard Salz
2021-01-25 16:04 ` Larry McVoy
2021-01-25 16:37 ` Dan Cross
2021-01-25 16:49 ` Richard Salz
2021-01-25 17:11 ` Bakul Shah
2021-01-25 17:25 ` Larry McVoy [this message]
2021-01-29 20:24 ` Dave Horsfall
2021-01-29 20:31 ` Larry McVoy
2021-01-25 23:46 ` John Gilmore
2021-01-29 19:53 ` Dave Horsfall
2021-01-25 22:25 ` Rob Gingell
2021-01-26 1:38 ` Jon Steinhart
2021-01-27 3:11 ` Dave Horsfall
2021-01-27 3:54 ` Jon Steinhart
2021-01-27 5:15 ` George Michaelson
2021-01-27 5:52 ` George Michaelson
2021-01-27 5:48 ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
2021-01-27 6:19 ` Henry Bent
2021-01-27 7:28 ` Jon Steinhart
2021-01-27 10:02 ` Dave Horsfall
2021-01-27 18:32 ` Grant Taylor via TUHS
2021-01-27 19:26 ` Nemo Nusquam
2021-01-27 15:47 ` Larry McVoy
2021-01-27 16:40 ` Stephen Clark
2021-01-26 2:45 ` John Cowan
2021-01-27 19:34 ` Nemo Nusquam
2021-01-29 22:02 ` Dave Horsfall
2021-01-30 1:50 ` Nemo Nusquam
2021-01-31 2:42 ` Dave Horsfall
2021-01-30 3:51 ` Richard Salz
2021-01-30 23:20 ` John Cowan
2021-01-25 15:48 ` Henry Bent
2021-01-25 14:33 ` Clem Cole
2021-01-24 23:50 ` Ed Carp
2021-01-24 21:29 ` Al Kossow
2021-01-24 21:53 ` Lars Brinkhoff
2021-02-14 2:04 ` Greg A. Woods
2021-02-14 2:49 ` Jon Steinhart
2021-02-14 4:53 ` Rich Morin
2021-01-24 18:41 ` Toby Thain
2021-01-24 18:24 ` Dan Cross
2021-01-24 18:42 ` arnold
2021-01-24 19:11 ` Larry McVoy
2021-01-24 21:07 ` Rich Morin
2021-01-24 21:10 ` Ronald Natalie
2021-01-24 22:30 ` Rich Morin
2021-01-24 21:16 ` Jon Steinhart
2021-01-28 2:48 Norman Wilson
2021-01-28 9:24 Noel Chiappa
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