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* [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO
@ 2022-08-09 22:18 Douglas McIlroy
  2022-08-09 22:25 ` Larry McVoy
  2022-08-10 15:05 ` arnold
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 40+ messages in thread
From: Douglas McIlroy @ 2022-08-09 22:18 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: TUHS main list

> I've always believed that pic was so well designed
> because it took a day to get the print out (back then),

I'm afraid this belief is urban legend. Credit for pic is due 100% to
Kernighan, not to the contemporary pace of computing practice.

Even in the 1950s, we had one-hour turnaround at Bell Labs. And the
leap from batch processing had happened well before pic. Turnaround on
modest Unix source files and tests has changed little in the past
fifty years.

Doug

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 40+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO
  2022-08-09 22:18 [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO Douglas McIlroy
@ 2022-08-09 22:25 ` Larry McVoy
  2022-08-10 15:05 ` arnold
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 40+ messages in thread
From: Larry McVoy @ 2022-08-09 22:25 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Douglas McIlroy; +Cc: TUHS main list

On Tue, Aug 09, 2022 at 06:18:52PM -0400, Douglas McIlroy wrote:
> > I've always believed that pic was so well designed
> > because it took a day to get the print out (back then),
> 
> I'm afraid this belief is urban legend. Credit for pic is due 100% to
> Kernighan, not to the contemporary pace of computing practice.

Well kudos to Brian then.  Pic is one the best designed tools I've ever
seen.  

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 40+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO
  2022-08-09 22:18 [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO Douglas McIlroy
  2022-08-09 22:25 ` Larry McVoy
@ 2022-08-10 15:05 ` arnold
  2022-08-10 17:14   ` Larry McVoy
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 40+ messages in thread
From: arnold @ 2022-08-10 15:05 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs, douglas.mcilroy

Hi All.

Douglas McIlroy <douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu> wrote:

> > I've always believed that pic was so well designed
> > because it took a day to get the print out (back then),
>
> I'm afraid this belief is urban legend. Credit for pic is due 100% to
> Kernighan, not to the contemporary pace of computing practice.

I occassionally forward TUHS items (that I think are) of interest
to Brian.  I have in the past forwarded one of Larry's "I like pic
because I can read the code and visualize the picture" emails to
him.  He responded that he didn't work that way. :-)

Here, by permission, is his response to Larry's latest note of
that kind, which I think is also of more or less general interest:

> Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2022 19:03:00 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Brian Kernighan <bwk@cs.princeton.edu>
> To: arnold@skeeve.com
> Subject: Re: larry mcvoy on pic, again
>
> I don't know that I would read too much into the development of
> Pic, though my memory is so dim that it would all be made up
> anyway.
>
> One observation: with Yacc and Lex available, languages were a lot
> easier to implement; I had already done a troff preprocessor so
> that aspect was well in hand.  And I was actually the owner of
> troff at the same time, so I could mix and match (e.g., the
> primitives for drawing lines).  I think that "seeing the output"
> wasn't too hard, either because I could use the typesetter, or the
> Tectronix 4014 (?) for which there was a troff output emulator
> that I think I wrote.
>
> The main issues as I recall were figuring out coordinate systems,
> since Pic had Y going positive as with conventional plotting,
> while troff had it going negative (down the page is higher Y
> values).
>
> But it's all kind of fuzzy at this point.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 40+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO
  2022-08-10 15:05 ` arnold
@ 2022-08-10 17:14   ` Larry McVoy
  2022-08-10 17:37     ` arnold
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 40+ messages in thread
From: Larry McVoy @ 2022-08-10 17:14 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: arnold; +Cc: tuhs, douglas.mcilroy

Well, I stand behind my comments.  Take a look at what xfig(1) 
produces and contrast that with even an average pic(1) source
file.  You can't see what xfig is saying but you can easily see
what pic is saying.

Maybe people just haven't written much pic, but what you can do
with it, and see without rendering it, is pretty amazing.

I got James Clark to add the 'i'th concept so you could do for
loops to lay out elements and I wrote a pic script where you 
could set variables like cpus, networks, disks and it would
draw different configurations of a SPARCcluster.  

Pic is pretty neat, I find it easier to read than any of the
other troff preprocessors.

On Wed, Aug 10, 2022 at 09:05:20AM -0600, arnold@skeeve.com wrote:
> Hi All.
> 
> Douglas McIlroy <douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu> wrote:
> 
> > > I've always believed that pic was so well designed
> > > because it took a day to get the print out (back then),
> >
> > I'm afraid this belief is urban legend. Credit for pic is due 100% to
> > Kernighan, not to the contemporary pace of computing practice.
> 
> I occassionally forward TUHS items (that I think are) of interest
> to Brian.  I have in the past forwarded one of Larry's "I like pic
> because I can read the code and visualize the picture" emails to
> him.  He responded that he didn't work that way. :-)
> 
> Here, by permission, is his response to Larry's latest note of
> that kind, which I think is also of more or less general interest:
> 
> > Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2022 19:03:00 -0400 (EDT)
> > From: Brian Kernighan <bwk@cs.princeton.edu>
> > To: arnold@skeeve.com
> > Subject: Re: larry mcvoy on pic, again
> >
> > I don't know that I would read too much into the development of
> > Pic, though my memory is so dim that it would all be made up
> > anyway.
> >
> > One observation: with Yacc and Lex available, languages were a lot
> > easier to implement; I had already done a troff preprocessor so
> > that aspect was well in hand.  And I was actually the owner of
> > troff at the same time, so I could mix and match (e.g., the
> > primitives for drawing lines).  I think that "seeing the output"
> > wasn't too hard, either because I could use the typesetter, or the
> > Tectronix 4014 (?) for which there was a troff output emulator
> > that I think I wrote.
> >
> > The main issues as I recall were figuring out coordinate systems,
> > since Pic had Y going positive as with conventional plotting,
> > while troff had it going negative (down the page is higher Y
> > values).
> >
> > But it's all kind of fuzzy at this point.

-- 
---
Larry McVoy           Retired to fishing          http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 40+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO
  2022-08-10 17:14   ` Larry McVoy
@ 2022-08-10 17:37     ` arnold
  2022-08-10 17:44       ` [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO [ really pic ] Jon Steinhart
  2022-08-10 18:24       ` [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO joe mcguckin
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 40+ messages in thread
From: arnold @ 2022-08-10 17:37 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: lm, arnold; +Cc: tuhs, douglas.mcilroy

Oh, I'm not arguing with any of this. I'm merely noting that
you are unusual in your ability to easily visualize pic results
from looking at the code.

Arnold

Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:

> Well, I stand behind my comments.  Take a look at what xfig(1) 
> produces and contrast that with even an average pic(1) source
> file.  You can't see what xfig is saying but you can easily see
> what pic is saying.
>
> Maybe people just haven't written much pic, but what you can do
> with it, and see without rendering it, is pretty amazing.
>
> I got James Clark to add the 'i'th concept so you could do for
> loops to lay out elements and I wrote a pic script where you 
> could set variables like cpus, networks, disks and it would
> draw different configurations of a SPARCcluster.  
>
> Pic is pretty neat, I find it easier to read than any of the
> other troff preprocessors.
>
> On Wed, Aug 10, 2022 at 09:05:20AM -0600, arnold@skeeve.com wrote:
> > Hi All.
> > 
> > Douglas McIlroy <douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu> wrote:
> > 
> > > > I've always believed that pic was so well designed
> > > > because it took a day to get the print out (back then),
> > >
> > > I'm afraid this belief is urban legend. Credit for pic is due 100% to
> > > Kernighan, not to the contemporary pace of computing practice.
> > 
> > I occassionally forward TUHS items (that I think are) of interest
> > to Brian.  I have in the past forwarded one of Larry's "I like pic
> > because I can read the code and visualize the picture" emails to
> > him.  He responded that he didn't work that way. :-)
> > 
> > Here, by permission, is his response to Larry's latest note of
> > that kind, which I think is also of more or less general interest:
> > 
> > > Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2022 19:03:00 -0400 (EDT)
> > > From: Brian Kernighan <bwk@cs.princeton.edu>
> > > To: arnold@skeeve.com
> > > Subject: Re: larry mcvoy on pic, again
> > >
> > > I don't know that I would read too much into the development of
> > > Pic, though my memory is so dim that it would all be made up
> > > anyway.
> > >
> > > One observation: with Yacc and Lex available, languages were a lot
> > > easier to implement; I had already done a troff preprocessor so
> > > that aspect was well in hand.  And I was actually the owner of
> > > troff at the same time, so I could mix and match (e.g., the
> > > primitives for drawing lines).  I think that "seeing the output"
> > > wasn't too hard, either because I could use the typesetter, or the
> > > Tectronix 4014 (?) for which there was a troff output emulator
> > > that I think I wrote.
> > >
> > > The main issues as I recall were figuring out coordinate systems,
> > > since Pic had Y going positive as with conventional plotting,
> > > while troff had it going negative (down the page is higher Y
> > > values).
> > >
> > > But it's all kind of fuzzy at this point.
>
> -- 
> ---
> Larry McVoy           Retired to fishing          http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 40+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO [ really pic ]
  2022-08-10 17:37     ` arnold
@ 2022-08-10 17:44       ` Jon Steinhart
  2022-08-10 18:02         ` Larry McVoy
  2022-08-10 18:24       ` [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO joe mcguckin
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 40+ messages in thread
From: Jon Steinhart @ 2022-08-10 17:44 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

arnold@skeeve.com writes:
> Oh, I'm not arguing with any of this. I'm merely noting that
> you are unusual in your ability to easily visualize pic results
> from looking at the code.

Not at all.  I'm a big fan of pic too.  And I've written preprocessors
for it, such as one that generated GANTT charts.

To me, the best feature of pic is invisible elements.  As Larry pointed
out, xfig uses absolute coordinates and is a mess.  When I use pic, I
usually start out with a big invisible box and hang things off of it.
That makes it trivial to do things like shrinking or growing just by
changing the invisible box size.

In my opinion, the biggest failing of pic comes from the one-way connection
to troff.  It's really hard to do things like "box that fits this text".

Jon

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 40+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO [ really pic ]
  2022-08-10 17:44       ` [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO [ really pic ] Jon Steinhart
@ 2022-08-10 18:02         ` Larry McVoy
  2022-08-10 18:04           ` Jon Steinhart
  2022-08-11  7:37           ` [TUHS] Re: pic's One-way Information Flow. (Was: SNOBOL and RATSNO) Ralph Corderoy
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 40+ messages in thread
From: Larry McVoy @ 2022-08-10 18:02 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Jon Steinhart; +Cc: tuhs

On Wed, Aug 10, 2022 at 10:44:32AM -0700, Jon Steinhart wrote:
> arnold@skeeve.com writes:
> > Oh, I'm not arguing with any of this. I'm merely noting that
> > you are unusual in your ability to easily visualize pic results
> > from looking at the code.
> 
> Not at all.  I'm a big fan of pic too.  And I've written preprocessors
> for it, such as one that generated GANTT charts.
> 
> To me, the best feature of pic is invisible elements.  As Larry pointed
> out, xfig uses absolute coordinates and is a mess.  When I use pic, I
> usually start out with a big invisible box and hang things off of it.
> That makes it trivial to do things like shrinking or growing just by
> changing the invisible box size.
> 
> In my opinion, the biggest failing of pic comes from the one-way connection
> to troff.  It's really hard to do things like "box that fits this text".

Jon gets it, I'm not the only one.  I do the same thing with a big
invisble box, it gives you a mental place to place things.

Also agree with the "box that fits this text" problem, pic really could
use a sizeof("this text in the current font/point size/line spacing")
that returns x,y.  But I don't see how to do that because pic doesn't
have that info, pic would need to be able to ask troff what those are.

Oh, and I've written my own crappy version of grap(1) that spits out
pic, it was pretty easy.

So at least Jon sees pic like I do and I suspect there are plenty more
who do as well.  Spend some time writing some pic scripts and I suspect
anyone can get good at seeing what it is doing.  It's a super pleasant
little language.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 40+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO [ really pic ]
  2022-08-10 18:02         ` Larry McVoy
@ 2022-08-10 18:04           ` Jon Steinhart
  2022-08-10 18:13             ` [TUHS] Re: pic Michael Kjörling
  2022-08-10 18:19             ` Dennis Boone
  2022-08-11  7:37           ` [TUHS] Re: pic's One-way Information Flow. (Was: SNOBOL and RATSNO) Ralph Corderoy
  1 sibling, 2 replies; 40+ messages in thread
From: Jon Steinhart @ 2022-08-10 18:04 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

Larry McVoy writes:
> Jon gets it, I'm not the only one.  I do the same thing with a big
> invisble box, it gives you a mental place to place things.
>
> Also agree with the "box that fits this text" problem, pic really could
> use a sizeof("this text in the current font/point size/line spacing")
> that returns x,y.  But I don't see how to do that because pic doesn't
> have that info, pic would need to be able to ask troff what those are.
>
> Oh, and I've written my own crappy version of grap(1) that spits out
> pic, it was pretty easy.
>
> So at least Jon sees pic like I do and I suspect there are plenty more
> who do as well.  Spend some time writing some pic scripts and I suspect
> anyone can get good at seeing what it is doing.  It's a super pleasant
> little language.

Stop being so agreeable, go fishing or something :-)

Might have mentioned this before, but I have a toolchain for converting
pic to SVG as that's the only vector format that can be included in word
documents.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 40+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: pic
  2022-08-10 18:04           ` Jon Steinhart
@ 2022-08-10 18:13             ` Michael Kjörling
  2022-08-10 18:19             ` Dennis Boone
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 40+ messages in thread
From: Michael Kjörling @ 2022-08-10 18:13 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

On 10 Aug 2022 11:04 -0700, from jon@fourwinds.com (Jon Steinhart):
> Might have mentioned this before, but I have a toolchain for converting
> pic to SVG as that's the only vector format that can be included in word
> documents.

Would that happen to be available somewhere, for posterity?

-- 
Michael Kjörling • https://michael.kjorling.se • michael@kjorling.se
 “Remember when, on the Internet, nobody cared that you were a dog?”


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 40+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: pic
  2022-08-10 18:04           ` Jon Steinhart
  2022-08-10 18:13             ` [TUHS] Re: pic Michael Kjörling
@ 2022-08-10 18:19             ` Dennis Boone
  2022-08-10 18:24               ` Jon Steinhart
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 40+ messages in thread
From: Dennis Boone @ 2022-08-10 18:19 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

 > Would that happen to be available somewhere, for posterity?

pic2plot, from the plotutils package, will do pic -> various formats,
including svg.

De

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 40+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO
  2022-08-10 17:37     ` arnold
  2022-08-10 17:44       ` [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO [ really pic ] Jon Steinhart
@ 2022-08-10 18:24       ` joe mcguckin
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 40+ messages in thread
From: joe mcguckin @ 2022-08-10 18:24 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Aharon Robbins; +Cc: tuhs, douglas.mcilroy

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3537 bytes --]

I used to work for a computer manufacturer that was nearly dead - lots of cubicles piled full of junk. The reference manuals had these very nice diagrams of the 
computer boards detailing the connectors on the board edges. Imagine my surprise when I discovered all the artwork was PIC generated…

Joe


Joe McGuckin
ViaNet Communications

joe@via.net
650-207-0372 cell
650-213-1302 office
650-969-2124 fax



> On Aug 10, 2022, at 10:37 AM, arnold@skeeve.com wrote:
> 
> Oh, I'm not arguing with any of this. I'm merely noting that
> you are unusual in your ability to easily visualize pic results
> from looking at the code.
> 
> Arnold
> 
> Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:
> 
>> Well, I stand behind my comments.  Take a look at what xfig(1) 
>> produces and contrast that with even an average pic(1) source
>> file.  You can't see what xfig is saying but you can easily see
>> what pic is saying.
>> 
>> Maybe people just haven't written much pic, but what you can do
>> with it, and see without rendering it, is pretty amazing.
>> 
>> I got James Clark to add the 'i'th concept so you could do for
>> loops to lay out elements and I wrote a pic script where you 
>> could set variables like cpus, networks, disks and it would
>> draw different configurations of a SPARCcluster.  
>> 
>> Pic is pretty neat, I find it easier to read than any of the
>> other troff preprocessors.
>> 
>> On Wed, Aug 10, 2022 at 09:05:20AM -0600, arnold@skeeve.com wrote:
>>> Hi All.
>>> 
>>> Douglas McIlroy <douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu> wrote:
>>> 
>>>>> I've always believed that pic was so well designed
>>>>> because it took a day to get the print out (back then),
>>>> 
>>>> I'm afraid this belief is urban legend. Credit for pic is due 100% to
>>>> Kernighan, not to the contemporary pace of computing practice.
>>> 
>>> I occassionally forward TUHS items (that I think are) of interest
>>> to Brian.  I have in the past forwarded one of Larry's "I like pic
>>> because I can read the code and visualize the picture" emails to
>>> him.  He responded that he didn't work that way. :-)
>>> 
>>> Here, by permission, is his response to Larry's latest note of
>>> that kind, which I think is also of more or less general interest:
>>> 
>>>> Date: Tue, 9 Aug 2022 19:03:00 -0400 (EDT)
>>>> From: Brian Kernighan <bwk@cs.princeton.edu>
>>>> To: arnold@skeeve.com
>>>> Subject: Re: larry mcvoy on pic, again
>>>> 
>>>> I don't know that I would read too much into the development of
>>>> Pic, though my memory is so dim that it would all be made up
>>>> anyway.
>>>> 
>>>> One observation: with Yacc and Lex available, languages were a lot
>>>> easier to implement; I had already done a troff preprocessor so
>>>> that aspect was well in hand.  And I was actually the owner of
>>>> troff at the same time, so I could mix and match (e.g., the
>>>> primitives for drawing lines).  I think that "seeing the output"
>>>> wasn't too hard, either because I could use the typesetter, or the
>>>> Tectronix 4014 (?) for which there was a troff output emulator
>>>> that I think I wrote.
>>>> 
>>>> The main issues as I recall were figuring out coordinate systems,
>>>> since Pic had Y going positive as with conventional plotting,
>>>> while troff had it going negative (down the page is higher Y
>>>> values).
>>>> 
>>>> But it's all kind of fuzzy at this point.
>> 
>> -- 
>> ---
>> Larry McVoy           Retired to fishing          http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat


[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 6575 bytes --]

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 40+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: pic
  2022-08-10 18:19             ` Dennis Boone
@ 2022-08-10 18:24               ` Jon Steinhart
  2022-08-11  0:10                 ` Dan Cross
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 40+ messages in thread
From: Jon Steinhart @ 2022-08-10 18:24 UTC (permalink / raw)


Dennis Boone writes:
>  > Would that happen to be available somewhere, for posterity?
>
> pic2plot, from the plotutils package, will do pic -> various formats,
> including svg.

Huh.  Wasn't aware of that one, but seems to rely on a groff svg driver
which I've never seen.

What I've done is pic -> groff -> ps2pdf -> pdf2svg -> inkscape.
Inkscape is used just to crop bounding box to the image size so
that there's not a huge amount of whitespace.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 40+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: pic
  2022-08-10 18:24               ` Jon Steinhart
@ 2022-08-11  0:10                 ` Dan Cross
  2022-08-11 12:13                   ` arnold
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 40+ messages in thread
From: Dan Cross @ 2022-08-11  0:10 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Unix Heritage Society

On Wed, Aug 10, 2022 at 2:24 PM Jon Steinhart <jon@fourwinds.com> wrote:
> Dennis Boone writes:
> >  > Would that happen to be available somewhere, for posterity?
> >
> > pic2plot, from the plotutils package, will do pic -> various formats,
> > including svg.
>
> Huh.  Wasn't aware of that one, but seems to rely on a groff svg driver
> which I've never seen.
>
> What I've done is pic -> groff -> ps2pdf -> pdf2svg -> inkscape.
> Inkscape is used just to crop bounding box to the image size so
> that there's not a huge amount of whitespace.

Google has built an in-house documentation system
based on extended markdown, and it was very nice:
check your text markdown files into a specially-named
subdirectory in the monorepo and point a web browser
at an internal service for a nicely rendered web version,
available immediately. There was a syntax for including
graphviz markup, and something similar for (I think)
state diagrams, but support for more general drawing
was missing, and I thought pic(1) would be just dandy,
if it could be persuaded to generate SVG.

I wrote to Brian, who works part-time at Google, and
pitched the idea to him, and he extended pic to
generate SVG, though it wasn't clear to what sources
he was modifying, exactly. Then the pandemic hit, and
I ended up leaving Google, so I don't think it went
beyond that, but IIRC he said that coercing pic to
generate SVG wasn't particularly difficult.

        - Dan C.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 40+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: pic's One-way Information Flow. (Was: SNOBOL and RATSNO)
  2022-08-10 18:02         ` Larry McVoy
  2022-08-10 18:04           ` Jon Steinhart
@ 2022-08-11  7:37           ` Ralph Corderoy
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 40+ messages in thread
From: Ralph Corderoy @ 2022-08-11  7:37 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

Hi Larry,

> Also agree with the "box that fits this text" problem, pic really
> could use a sizeof("this text in the current font/point size/line
> spacing") that returns x,y.  But I don't see how to do that because
> pic doesn't have that info, pic would need to be able to ask troff
> what those are.

Rather than work out the coordinates of everything, could pic punt some
of that downstream to troff by producing expressions which rest on
variables set by troff to, say, the width of a diversion.  The order of
evaluation presented to troff would obviously have to be topological on
the dependencies which bars cycles.  It would add elasticity to a
drawing.

The other approach would be a multi-pass effort where pic initially
assumes unknown dimensions, like some text's width, but also outputs
troff which will store the actual width for input to pic on future runs.

-- 
Cheers, Ralph.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 40+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: pic
  2022-08-11  0:10                 ` Dan Cross
@ 2022-08-11 12:13                   ` arnold
  2022-08-11 14:34                     ` Dan Cross
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 40+ messages in thread
From: arnold @ 2022-08-11 12:13 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs, crossd

Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com> wrote:

> I wrote to Brian, who works part-time at Google, and
> pitched the idea to him, and he extended pic to
> generate SVG, though it wasn't clear to what sources
> he was modifying, exactly. Then the pandemic hit, and
> I ended up leaving Google, so I don't think it went
> beyond that, but IIRC he said that coercing pic to
> generate SVG wasn't particularly difficult.

I'm sure he'd have been messing with his own sources. These
days it'd be best to tr to get new features into GNU pic
(IMHO, of course).

Arnold

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 40+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: pic
  2022-08-11 12:13                   ` arnold
@ 2022-08-11 14:34                     ` Dan Cross
  2022-08-12  1:52                       ` G. Branden Robinson
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 40+ messages in thread
From: Dan Cross @ 2022-08-11 14:34 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: arnold; +Cc: tuhs

On Thu, Aug 11, 2022 at 8:13 AM <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote:
> Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I wrote to Brian, who works part-time at Google, and
> > pitched the idea to him, and he extended pic to
> > generate SVG, though it wasn't clear to what sources
> > he was modifying, exactly. Then the pandemic hit, and
> > I ended up leaving Google, so I don't think it went
> > beyond that, but IIRC he said that coercing pic to
> > generate SVG wasn't particularly difficult.
>
> I'm sure he'd have been messing with his own sources. These
> days it'd be best to tr to get new features into GNU pic
> (IMHO, of course).

Oh surely. I just don't know what sources those would
be, exactly; presumably some derivative he's been
shepherded all these years? I wonder what it is....

        - Dan C.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 40+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: pic
  2022-08-11 14:34                     ` Dan Cross
@ 2022-08-12  1:52                       ` G. Branden Robinson
  2022-08-12  6:46                         ` arnold
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 40+ messages in thread
From: G. Branden Robinson @ 2022-08-12  1:52 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs, groff

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1746 bytes --]

[looping in groff list]

At 2022-08-11T10:34:50-0400, Dan Cross wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 11, 2022 at 8:13 AM <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote:
> > Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I wrote to Brian, who works part-time at Google, and pitched the
> > > idea to him, and he extended pic to generate SVG, though it wasn't
> > > clear to what sources he was modifying, exactly. Then the pandemic
> > > hit, and I ended up leaving Google, so I don't think it went
> > > beyond that, but IIRC he said that coercing pic to generate SVG
> > > wasn't particularly difficult.
> >
> > I'm sure he'd have been messing with his own sources. These days
> > it'd be best to tr to get new features into GNU pic (IMHO, of
> > course).
> 
> Oh surely. I just don't know what sources those would be, exactly;
> presumably some derivative he's been shepherded all these years? I
> wonder what it is....

Per Kernighan's _Unix: A History and a Memoir_ (2020), it seems likely
that it was simply groff.

"Camera-ready copy for this book was produced by the author in Times
Roman and Helvetica, using groff, ghostscript, and other open source
Unix tools." (copyright page)

Further, figure 5.4 in that work was "created with Pic" (p. 95).

GNU pic is already parameterized in the output format it produces,
supporting four variants: "tpic" (`-c` option), "tex" (`-t`), "fig"
(`-f`), and "troff".  "fig" support has been #defined out for years and
may never have been completed.

SVG output, perhaps behind an `-s` flag, would be extremely helpful
toward simplifying groff's HTML output story.  (The other barrier is
tbl's production of HTML tables, Savannah #60052.[1])

Regards,
Branden

[1] https://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?60052

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 40+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: pic
  2022-08-12  1:52                       ` G. Branden Robinson
@ 2022-08-12  6:46                         ` arnold
  2022-08-12 20:49                           ` G. Branden Robinson
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 40+ messages in thread
From: arnold @ 2022-08-12  6:46 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs, groff, g.branden.robinson

"G. Branden Robinson" <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:

> > Oh surely. I just don't know what sources those would be, exactly;
> > presumably some derivative he's been shepherded all these years? I
> > wonder what it is....
>
> Per Kernighan's _Unix: A History and a Memoir_ (2020), it seems likely
> that it was simply groff.

Knowing BWK, I personally doubt that he'd have messed with GNU pic
when he has his own copy of the original program that he himself wrote.
I'm also quite sure that he prefers C to C++.

> "Camera-ready copy for this book was produced by the author in Times
> Roman and Helvetica, using groff, ghostscript, and other open source
> Unix tools." (copyright page)

Sure, because he works on Linux and MacOS and the GNU tools are easily
installable and "just work".

Of course, Dan could always just ask Brian what he did. :-)

Arnold

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 40+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: pic
  2022-08-12  6:46                         ` arnold
@ 2022-08-12 20:49                           ` G. Branden Robinson
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 40+ messages in thread
From: G. Branden Robinson @ 2022-08-12 20:49 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: arnold; +Cc: tuhs, groff

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 874 bytes --]

At 2022-08-12T00:46:57-0600, arnold@skeeve.com wrote:
> "G. Branden Robinson" <g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Oh surely. I just don't know what sources those would be, exactly;
> > > presumably some derivative he's been shepherded all these years? I
> > > wonder what it is....
> >
> > Per Kernighan's _Unix: A History and a Memoir_ (2020), it seems
> > likely that it was simply groff.
> 
> Knowing BWK, I personally doubt that he'd have messed with GNU pic
> when he has his own copy of the original program that he himself wrote.

Wishful thinking on my part, maybe.

> I'm also quite sure that he prefers C to C++.

No doubt--but groff is pretty accessible to C programmers, being almost
entirely of an ancient vintage of C++.  We don't have rvalue references
inside lambda expressions inside templates, for instance.

Regards,
Branden

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 40+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO
  2022-08-10 21:30   ` John Cowan
@ 2022-08-11 16:08     ` Marc Donner
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 40+ messages in thread
From: Marc Donner @ 2022-08-11 16:08 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: John Cowan; +Cc: jnc, tuhs

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 714 bytes --]

Here's your blackmail video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02N_UOmT8Kk&t=2s
=====
nygeek.net
mindthegapdialogs.com/home <https://www.mindthegapdialogs.com/home>


On Wed, Aug 10, 2022 at 5:32 PM John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org> wrote:

>
>
> On Wed, Aug 10, 2022 at 5:13 PM Bill Cheswick <ches@cheswick.com> wrote:
>
>> “The trouble with folk songs is thst they are written by the people.”
>> -Tom Lehrer.
>
>
> Lehrer's songs, especially "The Periodic Table", have now become subject
> to the folk process themselves.  "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" was
> originally written by the Romantic poet Robert Southey, although in his
> version the bears' antagonist was a "wicked old woman".
>

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 40+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO
  2022-08-10 21:13 ` Bill Cheswick
@ 2022-08-10 21:30   ` John Cowan
  2022-08-11 16:08     ` Marc Donner
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 40+ messages in thread
From: John Cowan @ 2022-08-10 21:30 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Bill Cheswick; +Cc: jnc, tuhs

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On Wed, Aug 10, 2022 at 5:13 PM Bill Cheswick <ches@cheswick.com> wrote:

> “The trouble with folk songs is thst they are written by the people.” -Tom
> Lehrer.


Lehrer's songs, especially "The Periodic Table", have now become subject to
the folk process themselves.  "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" was
originally written by the Romantic poet Robert Southey, although in his
version the bears' antagonist was a "wicked old woman".

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 40+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO
  2022-08-09 17:42 Noel Chiappa
  2022-08-09 18:49 ` Larry McVoy
@ 2022-08-10 21:13 ` Bill Cheswick
  2022-08-10 21:30   ` John Cowan
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 40+ messages in thread
From: Bill Cheswick @ 2022-08-10 21:13 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: jnc; +Cc: tuhs

“The trouble with folk songs is thst they are written by the people.” -Tom Lehrer.

Ches

> On Aug 9, 2022, at 13:42, jnc@mercury.lcs.mit.edu wrote:
> 
> However, as the group gets much larger, it is
> _necessarily_ much more 'average' in the skill/etc level of its members.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 40+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO
  2022-08-09 15:15                           ` Andrew Hume
  2022-08-09 18:26                             ` Clem Cole
  2022-08-09 18:52                             ` Tom Teixeira
@ 2022-08-09 21:25                             ` Rob Pike
  2 siblings, 0 replies; 40+ messages in thread
From: Rob Pike @ 2022-08-09 21:25 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Andrew Hume; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

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I think both factors were relevant, as well as the preciousness and pace of
it all, as discussed by others here.

-rob


On Wed, Aug 10, 2022 at 1:15 AM Andrew Hume <andrew@humeweb.com> wrote:

> rob, clem:
>
> has there been a shift in ability? or is this more likely a sampling bias
> (because there were so many fewer programmers then)?
>
>
> On Aug 9, 2022, at 6:34 AM, Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 9, 2022 at 2:12 AM Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> I still marvel at the productivity and precision of his generation of
>> programmers.
>>
> Amen.
>
>
>

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 40+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO
  2022-08-09 19:21       ` Marshall Conover
@ 2022-08-09 20:19         ` Warner Losh
  0 siblings, 0 replies; 40+ messages in thread
From: Warner Losh @ 2022-08-09 20:19 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Marshall Conover; +Cc: Tom Teixeira, The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 4669 bytes --]

On Tue, Aug 9, 2022 at 1:23 PM Marshall Conover <marzhall.o@gmail.com>
wrote:

> > I've always believed that pic was so well designed
> because it took a day to get the print out (back then), so you had to
> have a language where you could see what it was doing.
>
> > I'll confess: I was never very good at bench checking batch programs,
> but only had at most a handful of assignments in college: generally cycles
> were cheap on time-sharing systems and I quickly adapted to interactive
> debugging.
>
> Along these lines, if I'm understanding correctly, my hunch would be
> that part of the precision being discussed was born out of necessity.
> When you can't debug interactively, you're forced to be precise with
> your changes, influencing how you think. On the flip side, when
> interactive development is an option, there's an easy route to take -
> and so that's what ends up informing those developmer's thought
> patterns.
>
> I think it's possible that if you were to force a new generation to
> only be able to iterate once a day, you may end up with a new
> generation with that precision. Perhaps material for a fun experiment
> for the teachers on the list.
>

I think it was a confluence of many things. Programs had to be smaller
(bigger ones didn't fit).
Interactive terminals were non-existant or extremely limited (80x24).
Printing out
listings and 'desk checking' the output was something you had plenty of
time to do.
Computing budgets were tiny: You had only so many $$$ for your runs and if
you made
too many, you'd run out of $$$ before you were done (more applicable as a
student than
as a professional post school though). Consequently your time was plentiful
and
computer time was scarce. Plus people from that generation tended to think
globally
and didn't compartmentalize as much as is done today (where people are told
that
everything below you in the stack can be considered hardware don't worry
about
how it works). The systems were also simpler to program, since all the 'go
fast'
caveats you have to cope with in todays system didn't exists, which also
encourage
global thinking.

Plus, computer programmers tended to be the best and the brightest because
they were the only ones that could (a) afford to undertake their study and
(b) the
only ones that didn't wash out of very demanding university programs. Plus
companies
tended to only trust their super expensive machines to the best and the
brightest,
further enhancing their skills (which we now know are built with
repetition) while the
less bright tended to be relegated to other machines with fewer
opportunities.

(yes, I know the previous paragraph way over-generalizes a very complex and
subtle dynamic that was at play, hence 'tendency' rather than some other
more
definite word).

Warner


> Cheers,
>
> Marshall
>
> On Tue, Aug 9, 2022 at 3:01 PM Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:
> >
> > On Tue, Aug 09, 2022 at 02:54:08PM -0400, Tom Teixeira wrote:
> > > On 8/9/22 2:49 PM, Larry McVoy wrote:
> > > >On Tue, Aug 09, 2022 at 01:42:32PM -0400, Noel Chiappa wrote:
> > > >>     > From: Rob Pike
> > > >>
> > > >>     > I still marvel at the productivity and precision of his
> generatio
> > > >>
> > > >>We noticed the same thing happening in the IETF, as the number of
> people
> > > >>working on networking went up. The explanation is really quite
> simple, once
> > > >>you think about it a bit.
> > > >>
> > > >>If you have a very small group, it is quite possible to have a very
> high
> > > >>level. (Not if it's selected randomly, of course; there has to be
> some
> > > >>sorting function.) However, as the group gets much larger, it is
> > > >>_necessarily_ much more 'average' in the skill/etc level of its
> members.
> > > >I used to complain about this at Sun and was dryly told "We get it,
> > > >Larry, you are yeast.  You need flour to make bread."
> > > >
> > > >And as time went on, I found that the smart people tended to find each
> > > >other.  So it was fine.
> > > >
> > > >It is more fun when it is a highly curated group of smart people.
> Made
> > > >me work hard to keep up.
> > >
> > > Put another way, "If you're always the smartest person in the room,
> you're
> > > spending your time in the wrong rooms."
> >
> > I was usually the dumbest one in the room, I found the right rooms :-)
> >
> > I personally like being "dumb", the other people just make you want to
> > work harder to reach their level.  Back when I used to play pool pretty
> > seriously, I always tried to play people better than me.  You get lazy
> > if you are the best.
> >
> > --
> > ---
> > Larry McVoy           Retired to fishing
> http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat
>

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 40+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO
  2022-08-09 19:00     ` Larry McVoy
@ 2022-08-09 19:21       ` Marshall Conover
  2022-08-09 20:19         ` Warner Losh
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 40+ messages in thread
From: Marshall Conover @ 2022-08-09 19:21 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Larry McVoy; +Cc: Tom Teixeira, The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

> I've always believed that pic was so well designed
because it took a day to get the print out (back then), so you had to
have a language where you could see what it was doing.

> I'll confess: I was never very good at bench checking batch programs, but only had at most a handful of assignments in college: generally cycles were cheap on time-sharing systems and I quickly adapted to interactive debugging.

Along these lines, if I'm understanding correctly, my hunch would be
that part of the precision being discussed was born out of necessity.
When you can't debug interactively, you're forced to be precise with
your changes, influencing how you think. On the flip side, when
interactive development is an option, there's an easy route to take -
and so that's what ends up informing those developmer's thought
patterns.

I think it's possible that if you were to force a new generation to
only be able to iterate once a day, you may end up with a new
generation with that precision. Perhaps material for a fun experiment
for the teachers on the list.

Cheers,

Marshall

On Tue, Aug 9, 2022 at 3:01 PM Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Aug 09, 2022 at 02:54:08PM -0400, Tom Teixeira wrote:
> > On 8/9/22 2:49 PM, Larry McVoy wrote:
> > >On Tue, Aug 09, 2022 at 01:42:32PM -0400, Noel Chiappa wrote:
> > >>     > From: Rob Pike
> > >>
> > >>     > I still marvel at the productivity and precision of his generatio
> > >>
> > >>We noticed the same thing happening in the IETF, as the number of people
> > >>working on networking went up. The explanation is really quite simple, once
> > >>you think about it a bit.
> > >>
> > >>If you have a very small group, it is quite possible to have a very high
> > >>level. (Not if it's selected randomly, of course; there has to be some
> > >>sorting function.) However, as the group gets much larger, it is
> > >>_necessarily_ much more 'average' in the skill/etc level of its members.
> > >I used to complain about this at Sun and was dryly told "We get it,
> > >Larry, you are yeast.  You need flour to make bread."
> > >
> > >And as time went on, I found that the smart people tended to find each
> > >other.  So it was fine.
> > >
> > >It is more fun when it is a highly curated group of smart people.  Made
> > >me work hard to keep up.
> >
> > Put another way, "If you're always the smartest person in the room, you're
> > spending your time in the wrong rooms."
>
> I was usually the dumbest one in the room, I found the right rooms :-)
>
> I personally like being "dumb", the other people just make you want to
> work harder to reach their level.  Back when I used to play pool pretty
> seriously, I always tried to play people better than me.  You get lazy
> if you are the best.
>
> --
> ---
> Larry McVoy           Retired to fishing          http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 40+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO
  2022-08-09 18:54   ` Tom Teixeira
@ 2022-08-09 19:00     ` Larry McVoy
  2022-08-09 19:21       ` Marshall Conover
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 40+ messages in thread
From: Larry McVoy @ 2022-08-09 19:00 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Tom Teixeira; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

On Tue, Aug 09, 2022 at 02:54:08PM -0400, Tom Teixeira wrote:
> On 8/9/22 2:49 PM, Larry McVoy wrote:
> >On Tue, Aug 09, 2022 at 01:42:32PM -0400, Noel Chiappa wrote:
> >>     > From: Rob Pike
> >>
> >>     > I still marvel at the productivity and precision of his generatio
> >>
> >>We noticed the same thing happening in the IETF, as the number of people
> >>working on networking went up. The explanation is really quite simple, once
> >>you think about it a bit.
> >>
> >>If you have a very small group, it is quite possible to have a very high
> >>level. (Not if it's selected randomly, of course; there has to be some
> >>sorting function.) However, as the group gets much larger, it is
> >>_necessarily_ much more 'average' in the skill/etc level of its members.
> >I used to complain about this at Sun and was dryly told "We get it,
> >Larry, you are yeast.  You need flour to make bread."
> >
> >And as time went on, I found that the smart people tended to find each
> >other.  So it was fine.
> >
> >It is more fun when it is a highly curated group of smart people.  Made
> >me work hard to keep up.
> 
> Put another way, "If you're always the smartest person in the room, you're
> spending your time in the wrong rooms."

I was usually the dumbest one in the room, I found the right rooms :-)

I personally like being "dumb", the other people just make you want to
work harder to reach their level.  Back when I used to play pool pretty
seriously, I always tried to play people better than me.  You get lazy
if you are the best.

-- 
---
Larry McVoy           Retired to fishing          http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 40+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO
  2022-08-09 18:49 ` Larry McVoy
@ 2022-08-09 18:54   ` Tom Teixeira
  2022-08-09 19:00     ` Larry McVoy
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 40+ messages in thread
From: Tom Teixeira @ 2022-08-09 18:54 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

On 8/9/22 2:49 PM, Larry McVoy wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 09, 2022 at 01:42:32PM -0400, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>>      > From: Rob Pike
>>
>>      > I still marvel at the productivity and precision of his generatio
>>
>> We noticed the same thing happening in the IETF, as the number of people
>> working on networking went up. The explanation is really quite simple, once
>> you think about it a bit.
>>
>> If you have a very small group, it is quite possible to have a very high
>> level. (Not if it's selected randomly, of course; there has to be some
>> sorting function.) However, as the group gets much larger, it is
>> _necessarily_ much more 'average' in the skill/etc level of its members.
> I used to complain about this at Sun and was dryly told "We get it,
> Larry, you are yeast.  You need flour to make bread."
>
> And as time went on, I found that the smart people tended to find each
> other.  So it was fine.
>
> It is more fun when it is a highly curated group of smart people.  Made
> me work hard to keep up.

Put another way, "If you're always the smartest person in the room, 
you're spending your time in the wrong rooms."



^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 40+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO
  2022-08-09 15:15                           ` Andrew Hume
  2022-08-09 18:26                             ` Clem Cole
@ 2022-08-09 18:52                             ` Tom Teixeira
  2022-08-09 21:25                             ` Rob Pike
  2 siblings, 0 replies; 40+ messages in thread
From: Tom Teixeira @ 2022-08-09 18:52 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1044 bytes --]

I'll confess: I was never very good at bench checking batch programs, 
but only had at most a handful of assignments in college: generally 
cycles were cheap on time-sharing systems and I quickly adapted to 
interactive debugging.

Over time (with embedded systems in networking gear and other 
applications), that wasn't possible and the new skill I admired was 
being able to add effective logging to diagnose problems. And since most 
of those systems were some combination of 
real-time/multiprocessor/multithreaded, it was generally not possible to 
deterministically repeat the sequence.

On 8/9/22 11:15 AM, Andrew Hume wrote:
> rob, clem:
>
> has there been a shift in ability? or is this more likely a sampling bias
> (because there were so many fewer programmers then)?
>
>
>> On Aug 9, 2022, at 6:34 AM, Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Aug 9, 2022 at 2:12 AM Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>     I still marvel at the productivity and precision of his
>>     generation of programmers.
>>
>> Amen.
>

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 40+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO
  2022-08-09 17:42 Noel Chiappa
@ 2022-08-09 18:49 ` Larry McVoy
  2022-08-09 18:54   ` Tom Teixeira
  2022-08-10 21:13 ` Bill Cheswick
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 40+ messages in thread
From: Larry McVoy @ 2022-08-09 18:49 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Noel Chiappa; +Cc: tuhs

On Tue, Aug 09, 2022 at 01:42:32PM -0400, Noel Chiappa wrote:
>     > From: Rob Pike
> 
>     > I still marvel at the productivity and precision of his generatio
> 
> We noticed the same thing happening in the IETF, as the number of people
> working on networking went up. The explanation is really quite simple, once
> you think about it a bit.
> 
> If you have a very small group, it is quite possible to have a very high
> level. (Not if it's selected randomly, of course; there has to be some
> sorting function.) However, as the group gets much larger, it is
> _necessarily_ much more 'average' in the skill/etc level of its members.

I used to complain about this at Sun and was dryly told "We get it,
Larry, you are yeast.  You need flour to make bread."

And as time went on, I found that the smart people tended to find each
other.  So it was fine.

It is more fun when it is a highly curated group of smart people.  Made
me work hard to keep up.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 40+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO
  2022-08-09 15:15                           ` Andrew Hume
@ 2022-08-09 18:26                             ` Clem Cole
  2022-08-09 18:52                             ` Tom Teixeira
  2022-08-09 21:25                             ` Rob Pike
  2 siblings, 0 replies; 40+ messages in thread
From: Clem Cole @ 2022-08-09 18:26 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Andrew Hume; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

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On Tue, Aug 9, 2022 at 11:15 AM Andrew Hume <andrew@humeweb.com> wrote:

> rob, clem:
>
> has there been a shift in ability? or is this more likely a sampling bias
> (because there were so many fewer programmers then)?
>
Certainly part of it.  But I think was more likely the type of person than
the number.   In those days because the tools and use of them required
extreme precision, only the precise found their way.

What's the Pixar Incredible's line:   *If everyone is super, no one will
be.*
ᐧ
ᐧ

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* [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO
@ 2022-08-09 17:42 Noel Chiappa
  2022-08-09 18:49 ` Larry McVoy
  2022-08-10 21:13 ` Bill Cheswick
  0 siblings, 2 replies; 40+ messages in thread
From: Noel Chiappa @ 2022-08-09 17:42 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs; +Cc: jnc

    > From: Rob Pike

    > I still marvel at the productivity and precision of his generatio

We noticed the same thing happening in the IETF, as the number of people
working on networking went up. The explanation is really quite simple, once
you think about it a bit.

If you have a very small group, it is quite possible to have a very high
level. (Not if it's selected randomly, of course; there has to be some
sorting function.) However, as the group gets much larger, it is
_necessarily_ much more 'average' in the skill/etc level of its members.

This rule applies to any group - which includes the members of TUHS,
of course.

	Noel


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 40+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO
  2022-08-09  6:11                       ` Rob Pike
  2022-08-09 13:34                         ` Clem Cole
  2022-08-09 13:56                         ` Larry McVoy
@ 2022-08-09 16:45                         ` William H. Mitchell
  2 siblings, 0 replies; 40+ messages in thread
From: William H. Mitchell @ 2022-08-09 16:45 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

A cool thing you buy in those days was the full source code for SPITBOL, on microfiche.  I bought a copy and a number of my friends did, too.  It was really beautiful code.

> On Aug 8, 2022, at 11:11 PM, Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> We're probably well off topic now but...
> 
> Many years ago I ran into Bob Dewar on a visit to Cambridge University and we got to talking. He said that the original implementation of SPITBOL, for the System/360, was in assembler (of course), and written by him and Belcher (?). The story he told was that they wrote it all down first, put it on punch cards, and sent it to the IBM machine. The next day they got back a listing with a bunch of errors. They iterated. By the fourth round—fifth day—they had a working SPITBOL.
> 
> I still marvel at the productivity and precision of his generation of programmers.
> 
> -rob


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 40+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO
  2022-08-09 13:34                         ` Clem Cole
  2022-08-09 15:15                           ` Andrew Hume
@ 2022-08-09 15:39                           ` Richard Salz
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 40+ messages in thread
From: Richard Salz @ 2022-08-09 15:39 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Clem Cole; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

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On Tue, Aug 9, 2022 at 9:36 AM Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:

>
> On Tue, Aug 9, 2022 at 2:12 AM Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> I still marvel at the productivity and precision of his generation of
>> programmers.
>>
> Amen.
>
> When I was first learning the ins and outs of the implementation of the
> York/APL System for the 360, I was regaled with similar stories and hoped
> that I could measure up to their standards.
>

If you don't know about Mel who wrote a cheating blackjack game for a drum
memory machine, read https://www.cs.utah.edu/~elb/folklore/mel.html  And
the postscript.

> ᐧ
>

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 40+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO
  2022-08-09 13:34                         ` Clem Cole
@ 2022-08-09 15:15                           ` Andrew Hume
  2022-08-09 18:26                             ` Clem Cole
                                               ` (2 more replies)
  2022-08-09 15:39                           ` Richard Salz
  1 sibling, 3 replies; 40+ messages in thread
From: Andrew Hume @ 2022-08-09 15:15 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Clem Cole; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

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rob, clem:

	has there been a shift in ability? or is this more likely a sampling bias
(because there were so many fewer programmers then)?


> On Aug 9, 2022, at 6:34 AM, Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Tue, Aug 9, 2022 at 2:12 AM Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com <mailto:robpike@gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
> I still marvel at the productivity and precision of his generation of programmers.
> Amen.


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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 40+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO
  2022-08-09  6:11                       ` Rob Pike
  2022-08-09 13:34                         ` Clem Cole
@ 2022-08-09 13:56                         ` Larry McVoy
  2022-08-09 16:45                         ` William H. Mitchell
  2 siblings, 0 replies; 40+ messages in thread
From: Larry McVoy @ 2022-08-09 13:56 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Rob Pike; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

On Tue, Aug 09, 2022 at 04:11:38PM +1000, Rob Pike wrote:
> We're probably well off topic now but...
> 
> Many years ago I ran into Bob Dewar on a visit to Cambridge University and
> we got to talking. He said that the original implementation of SPITBOL, for
> the System/360, was in assembler (of course), and written by him and
> Belcher (?). The story he told was that they wrote it all down first, put
> it on punch cards, and sent it to the IBM machine. The next day they got
> back a listing with a bunch of errors. They iterated. By the fourth
> round???fifth day???they had a working SPITBOL.
> 
> I still marvel at the productivity and precision of his generation of
> programmers.

I had the same reaction to pic(1).  You could look at the code and "see"
what it was doing.  I've always believed that pic was so well designed
because it took a day to get the print out (back then), so you had to
have a language where you could see what it was doing.

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 40+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO
  2022-08-09  6:11                       ` Rob Pike
@ 2022-08-09 13:34                         ` Clem Cole
  2022-08-09 15:15                           ` Andrew Hume
  2022-08-09 15:39                           ` Richard Salz
  2022-08-09 13:56                         ` Larry McVoy
  2022-08-09 16:45                         ` William H. Mitchell
  2 siblings, 2 replies; 40+ messages in thread
From: Clem Cole @ 2022-08-09 13:34 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Rob Pike; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

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On Tue, Aug 9, 2022 at 2:12 AM Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> I still marvel at the productivity and precision of his generation of
> programmers.
>
Amen.

When I was first learning the ins and outs of the implementation of the
York/APL System for the 360, I was regaled with similar stories and hoped
that I could measure up to their standards.
ᐧ

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 40+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO
  2022-08-09  5:12                     ` Jonathan Gevaryahu
@ 2022-08-09  6:11                       ` Rob Pike
  2022-08-09 13:34                         ` Clem Cole
                                           ` (2 more replies)
  0 siblings, 3 replies; 40+ messages in thread
From: Rob Pike @ 2022-08-09  6:11 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: Jonathan Gevaryahu; +Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

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We're probably well off topic now but...

Many years ago I ran into Bob Dewar on a visit to Cambridge University and
we got to talking. He said that the original implementation of SPITBOL, for
the System/360, was in assembler (of course), and written by him and
Belcher (?). The story he told was that they wrote it all down first, put
it on punch cards, and sent it to the IBM machine. The next day they got
back a listing with a bunch of errors. They iterated. By the fourth
round—fifth day—they had a working SPITBOL.

I still marvel at the productivity and precision of his generation of
programmers.

-rob


On Tue, Aug 9, 2022 at 3:13 PM Jonathan Gevaryahu <jgevaryahu@hotmail.com>
wrote:

> On 7/29/2022 1:07 AM, Tomasz Rola wrote:
> > On Wed, Jul 27, 2022 at 10:13:04PM -0600, William H. Mitchell wrote:
> > [...]
> >> Phil Budne: Thanks for your CSNOBOL4 implementation!  I’ve used it to
> show students SNOBOL4 in a comparative languages class at the U of
> Arizona.  (I was thinking your name sounded familiar!)
> >>
> >>> On Jul 27, 2022, at 7:03 PM, Phil Budne <phil@ultimate.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Anyway, I have got Phil Budne's implementation
> >>> C'est moi!  SNOBOL came out of Bell Labs in Holmdel NJ.
> >>> There was a SNOBOL3 implementation in Unix 6th Edition days called
> "sno".
> > [...]
> >
> > Yes, I have had a look and it seems to be very nicely written
> > project. Oh, and there is plenty of Snobol4 code to look at, too...
> >
> > Thank you.
> >
> Speaking of SNOBOL4, I typed up the SNOBOL code from the NRL Report 7948
> (1975) titled "Automatic Translation of English Text to Phonetics by
> Means of Letter-to-Sound Rules" by Honey Sue Elovitz, Rodney W. Johnson,
> Astrid McHugh and John E. Shore, and made some minor modifications to
> make it work properly with the windows/catspaw version of snobol/spitbol.
>
> It might not be necessary to make those changes at all, with Phil's
> version, I'll need to try that!
>
> I have both the patched and unpatched versions at
> https://github.com/Lord-Nightmare/NRL_TextToPhonemes and it does behave
> correctly/matches the paper (at least the patched version does).
>
> I recently (within the past month) discovered another later port of the
> NRL ruleset from 1978 as part of Peter B. Maggs' ANGLOPHONE package for
> S-100 systems, intended for use with the Computalker CT-1 speech
> synthesis S-100 card. Apparently Rodney W. Johnson had continued
> developing the rules even after the 1975/1976 publications of the NRL
> report and the IEEE ITASSP version of said report, and I haven't updated
> the bibliography on the github readme yet.
>
>
> Jonathan G.
>
> --
> Jonathan Gevaryahu AKA Lord Nightmare
> jgevaryahu@gmail.com
> jgevaryahu@hotmail.com
>
>

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^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 40+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO
  2022-07-29  5:07                   ` Tomasz Rola
@ 2022-08-09  5:12                     ` Jonathan Gevaryahu
  2022-08-09  6:11                       ` Rob Pike
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 40+ messages in thread
From: Jonathan Gevaryahu @ 2022-08-09  5:12 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: tuhs

On 7/29/2022 1:07 AM, Tomasz Rola wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 27, 2022 at 10:13:04PM -0600, William H. Mitchell wrote:
> [...]
>> Phil Budne: Thanks for your CSNOBOL4 implementation!  I’ve used it to show students SNOBOL4 in a comparative languages class at the U of Arizona.  (I was thinking your name sounded familiar!)
>>
>>> On Jul 27, 2022, at 7:03 PM, Phil Budne <phil@ultimate.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Anyway, I have got Phil Budne's implementation
>>> C'est moi!  SNOBOL came out of Bell Labs in Holmdel NJ.
>>> There was a SNOBOL3 implementation in Unix 6th Edition days called "sno".
> [...]
>
> Yes, I have had a look and it seems to be very nicely written
> project. Oh, and there is plenty of Snobol4 code to look at, too...
>
> Thank you.
>
Speaking of SNOBOL4, I typed up the SNOBOL code from the NRL Report 7948 
(1975) titled "Automatic Translation of English Text to Phonetics by 
Means of Letter-to-Sound Rules" by Honey Sue Elovitz, Rodney W. Johnson, 
Astrid McHugh and John E. Shore, and made some minor modifications to 
make it work properly with the windows/catspaw version of snobol/spitbol.

It might not be necessary to make those changes at all, with Phil's 
version, I'll need to try that!

I have both the patched and unpatched versions at 
https://github.com/Lord-Nightmare/NRL_TextToPhonemes and it does behave 
correctly/matches the paper (at least the patched version does).

I recently (within the past month) discovered another later port of the 
NRL ruleset from 1978 as part of Peter B. Maggs' ANGLOPHONE package for 
S-100 systems, intended for use with the Computalker CT-1 speech 
synthesis S-100 card. Apparently Rodney W. Johnson had continued 
developing the rules even after the 1975/1976 publications of the NRL 
report and the IEEE ITASSP version of said report, and I haven't updated 
the bibliography on the github readme yet.


Jonathan G.

-- 
Jonathan Gevaryahu AKA Lord Nightmare
jgevaryahu@gmail.com
jgevaryahu@hotmail.com


^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 40+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO
  2022-07-28  4:13                 ` [TUHS] SNOBOL and RATSNO William H. Mitchell
  2022-07-29  4:28                   ` [TUHS] " Dave Horsfall
@ 2022-07-29  5:07                   ` Tomasz Rola
  2022-08-09  5:12                     ` Jonathan Gevaryahu
  1 sibling, 1 reply; 40+ messages in thread
From: Tomasz Rola @ 2022-07-29  5:07 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society

On Wed, Jul 27, 2022 at 10:13:04PM -0600, William H. Mitchell wrote:
> 
[...]
> Phil Budne: Thanks for your CSNOBOL4 implementation!  I’ve used it to show students SNOBOL4 in a comparative languages class at the U of Arizona.  (I was thinking your name sounded familiar!)
> 
> > On Jul 27, 2022, at 7:03 PM, Phil Budne <phil@ultimate.com> wrote:
> > 
> >> Anyway, I have got Phil Budne's implementation
> > 
> > C'est moi!  SNOBOL came out of Bell Labs in Holmdel NJ.
> > There was a SNOBOL3 implementation in Unix 6th Edition days called "sno".
[...]

Yes, I have had a look and it seems to be very nicely written
project. Oh, and there is plenty of Snobol4 code to look at, too...

Thank you.

-- 
Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola@bigfoot.com             **

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 40+ messages in thread

* [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO
  2022-07-28  4:13                 ` [TUHS] SNOBOL and RATSNO William H. Mitchell
@ 2022-07-29  4:28                   ` Dave Horsfall
  2022-07-29  5:07                   ` Tomasz Rola
  1 sibling, 0 replies; 40+ messages in thread
From: Dave Horsfall @ 2022-07-29  4:28 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society; +Cc: Computer Old Farts Followers

I did get SPITBOL to work past its expiry date on OS/360 :-)  It was 
dubbed as the "Superzap of the year" by one of my CompSci lecturers (Dr. 
G.McMahon, UNSW).

The first couple of time-bombs were easy to find, but not so the rest 
(long story).

Probably belongs over on COFF now...

-- Dave

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 40+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2022-08-12 20:50 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 40+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2022-08-09 22:18 [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO Douglas McIlroy
2022-08-09 22:25 ` Larry McVoy
2022-08-10 15:05 ` arnold
2022-08-10 17:14   ` Larry McVoy
2022-08-10 17:37     ` arnold
2022-08-10 17:44       ` [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO [ really pic ] Jon Steinhart
2022-08-10 18:02         ` Larry McVoy
2022-08-10 18:04           ` Jon Steinhart
2022-08-10 18:13             ` [TUHS] Re: pic Michael Kjörling
2022-08-10 18:19             ` Dennis Boone
2022-08-10 18:24               ` Jon Steinhart
2022-08-11  0:10                 ` Dan Cross
2022-08-11 12:13                   ` arnold
2022-08-11 14:34                     ` Dan Cross
2022-08-12  1:52                       ` G. Branden Robinson
2022-08-12  6:46                         ` arnold
2022-08-12 20:49                           ` G. Branden Robinson
2022-08-11  7:37           ` [TUHS] Re: pic's One-way Information Flow. (Was: SNOBOL and RATSNO) Ralph Corderoy
2022-08-10 18:24       ` [TUHS] Re: SNOBOL and RATSNO joe mcguckin
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2022-08-09 17:42 Noel Chiappa
2022-08-09 18:49 ` Larry McVoy
2022-08-09 18:54   ` Tom Teixeira
2022-08-09 19:00     ` Larry McVoy
2022-08-09 19:21       ` Marshall Conover
2022-08-09 20:19         ` Warner Losh
2022-08-10 21:13 ` Bill Cheswick
2022-08-10 21:30   ` John Cowan
2022-08-11 16:08     ` Marc Donner
2022-07-23  2:57 [TUHS] Line Numbers Before SysIII nl? BSD num? segaloco via TUHS
2022-07-23  5:56 ` [TUHS] " markus schnalke
2022-07-23  7:55   ` segaloco via TUHS
2022-07-23 11:01     ` Dan Cross
2022-07-23 11:20       ` John Cowan
2022-07-23 12:00         ` Dan Cross
2022-07-24 19:02           ` Tomasz Rola
2022-07-28  0:30             ` Tomasz Rola
2022-07-28  1:03               ` Phil Budne
2022-07-28  4:13                 ` [TUHS] SNOBOL and RATSNO William H. Mitchell
2022-07-29  4:28                   ` [TUHS] " Dave Horsfall
2022-07-29  5:07                   ` Tomasz Rola
2022-08-09  5:12                     ` Jonathan Gevaryahu
2022-08-09  6:11                       ` Rob Pike
2022-08-09 13:34                         ` Clem Cole
2022-08-09 15:15                           ` Andrew Hume
2022-08-09 18:26                             ` Clem Cole
2022-08-09 18:52                             ` Tom Teixeira
2022-08-09 21:25                             ` Rob Pike
2022-08-09 15:39                           ` Richard Salz
2022-08-09 13:56                         ` Larry McVoy
2022-08-09 16:45                         ` William H. Mitchell

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