From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.0 required=5.0 tests=MAILING_LIST_MULTI autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 7233 invoked from network); 28 Sep 2021 18:35:10 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (45.79.103.53) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 28 Sep 2021 18:35:10 -0000 Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 1E6739CB0D; Wed, 29 Sep 2021 04:35:08 +1000 (AEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 373279CAE4; Wed, 29 Sep 2021 04:34:51 +1000 (AEST) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id D61839CAE4; Wed, 29 Sep 2021 04:34:48 +1000 (AEST) X-Greylist: delayed 1152 seconds by postgrey-1.36 at minnie.tuhs.org; Wed, 29 Sep 2021 04:34:48 AEST Received: from mercury.lcs.mit.edu (mercury.lcs.mit.edu [18.26.0.122]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 5BA969CAE3 for ; Wed, 29 Sep 2021 04:34:48 +1000 (AEST) Received: by mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11178) id F37BC18C0B7; Tue, 28 Sep 2021 14:15:34 -0400 (EDT) To: tuhs@tuhs.org Message-Id: <20210928181534.F37BC18C0B7@mercury.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2021 14:15:34 -0400 (EDT) From: jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu (Noel Chiappa) Subject: Re: [TUHS] Systematic approach to command-line interfaces 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: jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org Sender: "TUHS" > From: "Greg A. Woods" > the elegance of fork() is incredible! That's because in PDP-11 Unix, they didn't have the _room_ to create a huge mess. Try reading the exec() code in V6 or so. (I'm in a bit of a foul mood today; my laptop sorta locked up when a _single_ Edge browser window process grew to almost _2GB_ in size. Are you effing kidding me? If I had any idea what today would look like, back when I was 20 - especially the massive excrement pile that the Internet has turned into - I never would have gone into computers - cabinetwork, or something, would have been an infinitely superior career choice.) > I now struggle with liking the the Unix concept of "everything is a > file" -- especially with respect to actual data files. Multics also got > it right to use single-level storage -- that's the right abstraction Well, files a la Unix, instead of the SLS, are OK for a _lot_ of data storage - pretty much everything except less-common cases like concurrent access to a shared database, etc. Where the SLS really shines is _code_ - being able to just do a subroutine call to interact with something else has incredible bang/buck ratio - although I concede doing it all securely is hard (although they did make a lot of progress there). Noel