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=-1.1 required=5.0 tests=DKIM_SIGNED,DKIM_VALID, DKIM_VALID_AU,FREEMAIL_FROM,MAILING_LIST_MULTI autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 5752 invoked from network); 16 Nov 2021 04:09:34 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (45.79.103.53) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 16 Nov 2021 04:09:34 -0000 Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 6D3E09C24D; Tue, 16 Nov 2021 14:09:31 +1000 (AEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8D5489C20A; Tue, 16 Nov 2021 14:09:07 +1000 (AEST) Authentication-Results: minnie.tuhs.org; dkim=pass (2048-bit key; unprotected) header.d=gmail.com header.i=@gmail.com header.b="di4br59e"; dkim-atps=neutral Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id A069D9C203; Tue, 16 Nov 2021 14:09:04 +1000 (AEST) Received: from mail-pg1-f172.google.com (mail-pg1-f172.google.com [209.85.215.172]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 30CAF9C1E1 for ; Tue, 16 Nov 2021 14:09:04 +1000 (AEST) Received: by mail-pg1-f172.google.com with SMTP id r132so14273481pgr.9 for ; Mon, 15 Nov 2021 20:09:04 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20210112; h=date:from:to:subject:message-id:references:mime-version :content-disposition:in-reply-to:user-agent; bh=kqOY14OcQ6pWHPZKShlbnEMVsSCbSjpQNIdIurlH7Hw=; b=di4br59e7T6n5WE+ZPH721r8rxhC/lpp2mB1O1JbRO+lw2i7ZTslslthZKw+T0IKfn p6m5KMo8g2An0KqUJ3NCoIdzz4yuTXJjpDND5E9hIDxqNA/cixc0gJjM+D1WTueSivYR JYebt5mG1ZUrC4TrzGZRSIqy0BT+1AKxVo+faKRPrw1LqY5M5v20qCd1QJvJ1Z0eGd1r BIpTkllblEHNuw1t5t9r6lhiNctedbik+n7h45ug3nZZ5fY4TpPSl/gt95gbLz4fojAW gJlz/Axr2zG1R5k2q+vTc8whudTph/cJ4VWmOjBMN81S4+j7BHbHPHPjuo3HYy/OXwEF S/+A== X-Google-DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=1e100.net; s=20210112; h=x-gm-message-state:date:from:to:subject:message-id:references :mime-version:content-disposition:in-reply-to:user-agent; bh=kqOY14OcQ6pWHPZKShlbnEMVsSCbSjpQNIdIurlH7Hw=; b=Q0AO0zjmqoRBGliJY3zOOkZN/XSl2xCFAdSjrQ3ytWT2mwJP+9JV/1IxAxaGNdjvFs c6uOaZ+a5wvG+hdidD/5knpTbF+gpjaYrl2b3RgUYBP5efrx6l2X+VPf2XN/m97Mgwd1 uN+GGVYO0d4SmCftx3/13MHbqfSSYNv12fD72TcuF3k/ESEps6KIG0yut4I1S5n6+6Si LlxTnfy8PI5sVJtsfVhzhQpWjqQKlokyuxSax8T6nP5XjqpXXAxDIXo0k6tfsIzzb60E 73sSoOUh1MJEK44e5fjW71dca/J/13Ojj1UVBIxEwu9W3V0geQ5ib2srkDGNDNTTpxgc +X7Q== X-Gm-Message-State: AOAM530ZP4ps3lFVmq8UZ//JApjX4hu58q0gVg4jxsBFQ0bxLRHKH3hr pbZicmY44fucWagwMMK1dWELnsL5XW0= X-Google-Smtp-Source: ABdhPJzbC0RZkkyYwq3km6vQLO0Ou8ilcRIAEnwN7METz5XWdYvmE9k1EwVBFoqWVo5YAwWZ1YkoQw== X-Received: by 2002:a63:6a43:: with SMTP id f64mr2777145pgc.393.1637035743319; Mon, 15 Nov 2021 20:09:03 -0800 (PST) Received: from localhost.localdomain ([1.145.114.238]) by smtp.gmail.com with ESMTPSA id s3sm747924pjk.41.2021.11.15.20.09.02 for (version=TLS1_3 cipher=TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 bits=256/256); Mon, 15 Nov 2021 20:09:03 -0800 (PST) Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2021 15:08:59 +1100 From: "G. Branden Robinson" To: TUHS main list Message-ID: <20211116040858.se3ygq2butxqopcx@localhost.localdomain> References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/signed; micalg=pgp-sha256; protocol="application/pgp-signature"; boundary="rvwm4rrltzlq3jzc" Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: NeoMutt/20180716 Subject: Re: [TUHS] Book Recommendation 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: , Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org Sender: "TUHS" --rvwm4rrltzlq3jzc Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable At 2021-11-15T22:16:41-0500, Douglas McIlroy wrote: > While waiting to see the full text, I've poked around the index for > subjects of interest. It certainly is copious, and knows about a lot > of things that I don't. >=20 > The authors make a reasonable choice in identifying the dawn of > "modern computing" with Eniac and relegating non-electronic machines > to prehistory. Just so long as the antikythera mechanism is in there... ;-) > Among programming languages, Fortran, which changed the nature of > programming, is merely hinted at (buried in the forgettable Fortran > Monitoring System), while its insignificant offspring PL/I is present. PL/I was important enough to rate presentation in _The Elements of Programming Style_. :P I have gotten the impression that it was a language that was beloved by no one. > (Possibly this is an indexing oversight. John Backus, who led the > Fortran project, is mentioned quite early in the book.) Algol, Lisp, > Simula and Smalltalk quite properly make the list, but Basic rates > more coverage than any of them. It's hard to overstate the impact of BASIC on the first generation of people who grew up with computers in the home instead of encountering them only later in a time-sharing environment with professional operators and administrators. This is not because BASIC was a high quality language, especially as stripped down by Microsoft and other implementors. On 8-bit boxes with no memory protection and no privilege structure, it taught one a lot about absolute liberty and the absolute consequences thereof. We power cycled machines with a frequency that would have horrified the staff of any computing center. Everybody knew there were bigger, better, or faster languages out there, but they were priced commercially and marketed at professionals. The same was usually true of editor/assembler/linker packages. But BASIC was packed-in on ROM chips and always available. And you could always assemble your own opcodes (or get listings of hex bytes from hobbyist magazines) and "poke" them into memory--a good way to learn and to polish that machine reset button to a shine. At one time, it was considered good sport to ridicule people whose first programming language was BASIC; after a while I figured out that this was a form of hazing, similar to the snotty attitudes adopted by a subset of student employees who got access to group "wheel" on at least one university-owned machine, lorded it over undergraduates, and who kept the existence of or access to Volume 2 of the Unix Programmer's Manual a secret. ("If you can't learn the system just from the man pages, you must be pretty dumb.") Such was my first exposure to BSD and SunOS partisans. After a while, I learned they weren't _all_ like that... 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