From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: 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: from minnie.tuhs.org (minnie.tuhs.org [IPv6:2600:3c01:e000:146::1]) by inbox.vuxu.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 08DF727A68 for ; Sun, 7 Jul 2024 07:34:01 +0200 (CEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [IPv6:::1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 802E843E30; Sun, 7 Jul 2024 15:33:55 +1000 (AEST) Received: from freefriends.org (frenzy.freefriends.org [198.99.81.75]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id D46A843E18 for ; Sun, 7 Jul 2024 15:33:43 +1000 (AEST) X-Envelope-From: arnold@skeeve.com Received: from freefriends.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by freefriends.org (8.16.1/8.16.1) with ESMTPS id 4675XO7S1394221 (version=TLSv1.3 cipher=TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384 bits=256 verify=NOT); Sat, 6 Jul 2024 23:33:24 -0600 Received: (from arnold@localhost) by freefriends.org (8.16.1/8.14.7/Submit) id 4675XNi01394214; Sat, 6 Jul 2024 23:33:23 -0600 From: arnold@skeeve.com Message-Id: <202407070533.4675XNi01394214@freefriends.org> X-Authentication-Warning: frenzy.freefriends.org: arnold set sender to arnold@skeeve.com using -f Date: Sat, 06 Jul 2024 23:33:23 -0600 To: tuhs@tuhs.org, johnl@taugh.com References: <20240705213804.550128EDF53C@ary.qy> <20240705214901.GR26356@mcvoy.com> <20240705231714.5F0E58EE123E@ary.qy> In-Reply-To: <20240705231714.5F0E58EE123E@ary.qy> User-Agent: Heirloom mailx 12.5 7/5/10 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID-Hash: X6VD357EEOOPFK66SXRCILFQQ6VBXSIN X-Message-ID-Hash: X6VD357EEOOPFK66SXRCILFQQ6VBXSIN X-MailFrom: arnold@skeeve.com X-Mailman-Rule-Misses: dmarc-mitigation; no-senders; approved; emergency; loop; banned-address; member-moderation; header-match-tuhs.tuhs.org-0; nonmember-moderation; administrivia; implicit-dest; max-recipients; max-size; news-moderation; no-subject; digests; suspicious-header X-Mailman-Version: 3.3.6b1 Precedence: list Subject: [TUHS] Re: mental architecture models, Anyone ever heard of teaching a case study of Initial Unix? List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list Archived-At: List-Archive: List-Help: List-Owner: List-Post: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: "John Levine" wrote: > These days we write code and compile it for x64 or ARM or RISC-V and > for the most part, it just works because the data formats and addressing > are all the same. I have to agree with this. My experience is that for most[1] user level code, the architecture simply doesn't matter. I started working on gawk on vaxen, moved to MC68010, then to Sparc, then to 32-bit x86, then to 64-bit x86, with a side segue to 32-bit PPC. Other people compile it on everything else: ARM, S/390, Alpha, Itanium, RISC-V, you name it. OS differences matter more than architecutre differences. This list's membership is heavily weighted with compiler writers and OS porters, which is fine, but that's a very small percentage of the number of people out in the world writing code. Those folks (including me in my $DAYJOB) all work in C++, Java, Python, Rust, and Go, and the architecture simply doesn't matter to them. (C# is nominally portable as well, but hasn't caught on outside of Windows like the others.) I *do* think that studying a nice architecture, like the PDP-11, is important for people learning software development. In college I took data structures and algorithms together with PDP-11 assembler, and it was only when I saw how recursion worked in assembler with the stack that I finally understood it. It was a real epiphany. My two cents, Arnold [1] Architecture does come into play if you're writing _binary_ data, which is why RPC/XDR were invented for NFS and why Google has it's RPC language and libraries.