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From: Chet Ramey <chet.ramey@case.edu>
To: "Nelson H. F. Beebe" <beebe@math.utah.edu>,
	The Unix Heritage Society mailing list <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] [tuhs] The Unix shell: a 50-year view
Date: Fri, 2 Jul 2021 18:27:45 -0400	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <231143c0-3168-ee1c-37e2-5c93238432d2@case.edu> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CMM.0.95.0.1625261060.beebe@gamma.math.utah.edu>

On 7/2/21 5:24 PM, Nelson H. F. Beebe wrote:
> In this week's BSDNow.tv podcast, available at
> 
>          https://www.bsdnow.tv/409
> 
> there is a story about a new conference paper on the Unix shell.  The
> paper is available at
> 
> 	Unix shell programming: the next 50 years
> 	HotOS '21: Workshop on Hot Topics in Operating Systems, Ann
> 	Arbor, Michigan, 1 June, 2021--3 June, 2021
> 	https://doi.org/10.1145/3458336.3465294
> 
> The tone is overall negative

Perhaps, though they do say

"The shell is a useful abstraction deserving of our attention despite its
imperfections (Section 2)."

and

"The Unix shell hits a sweet spot between succinctness, expressive power,
and performance."

I participated in the accompanying panel. Everyone seems to hate the
shell's quoting rules and word splitting, and those two things alone are
sufficient to give the shell a bad rap, yet one thing that became clear
is that people are trying to use the shell (or not) without understanding
the underlying Unix abstractions that we take for granted (such as the file
system). And what's worse: they don't want to and nobody is teaching them.

-- 
``The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne.'' - Chaucer
		 ``Ars longa, vita brevis'' - Hippocrates
Chet Ramey, UTech, CWRU    chet@case.edu    http://tiswww.cwru.edu/~chet/

  parent reply	other threads:[~2021-07-02 22:28 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 109+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2021-07-02 21:24 Nelson H. F. Beebe
2021-07-02 21:36 ` Larry McVoy
2021-07-02 21:56   ` Henry Bent
2021-07-02 23:12     ` Steve Nickolas
2021-07-02 23:49       ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2021-07-03 13:34         ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2021-07-03 13:56           ` Richard Salz
2021-07-03 12:04       ` Thomas Paulsen
2021-07-03 13:20         ` Dan Cross
2021-07-03 17:37           ` Theodore Ts'o
2021-07-03 17:57             ` Warner Losh
2021-07-03 18:10               ` Theodore Ts'o
2021-07-03 20:02                 ` Dan Cross
2021-07-04  0:47           ` Tomasz Rola
2021-07-04  4:36             ` Larry McVoy
2021-07-04 14:56               ` Dan Cross
2021-07-04 16:07               ` Theodore Ts'o
2021-07-04 20:10               ` David Barto
2021-07-05  0:25                 ` Larry McVoy
2021-07-05  1:23                 ` John Cowan
2021-07-04 12:48             ` Dan Cross
2021-07-05  7:14               ` Tomasz Rola
2021-07-05 16:26                 ` John Cowan
2021-07-06 23:17                   ` Tomasz Rola
2021-07-06 23:47                     ` Steve Nickolas
2021-07-06 23:49                       ` Warner Losh
2021-07-06 23:48                     ` John Cowan
2021-07-07  0:46                     ` Theodore Ts'o
2021-07-07  0:58                       ` George Michaelson
2021-07-07  2:48                         ` Larry McVoy
2021-07-07 18:32                       ` Tomasz Rola
2021-07-07 20:50                         ` Michael Kjörling
2021-07-08  6:46                           ` [TUHS] Overgrown ffox (was: The Unix shell: a 50-year view) Tomasz Rola
2021-07-08 13:59                             ` Derek Fawcus
2021-07-08 19:25                               ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2021-07-08 19:37                                 ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2021-07-08 20:40                                 ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2021-07-08 22:23                             ` Kevin Bowling
2021-07-08 21:47                           ` [TUHS] [tuhs] The Unix shell: a 50-year view Theodore Ts'o
2021-07-09 20:14                             ` Michael Kjörling
2021-07-07 13:54                     ` Tony Finch
2021-07-06 16:05                 ` Clem Cole
2021-07-09 22:19                   ` Tomasz Rola
2021-07-04 20:10           ` Tony Finch
2021-07-05  3:59             ` Theodore Ts'o
2021-07-05 15:08               ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2021-07-05  3:52           ` Bakul Shah
2021-07-04 18:17     ` John Dow via TUHS
2021-07-04 19:46       ` Clem Cole
2021-07-05  1:33         ` Noel Hunt
2021-07-05  2:38           ` Clem Cole
2021-07-05  2:51             ` Warner Losh
2021-07-05  3:03               ` Clem Cole
2021-07-05  3:01             ` Clem Cole
2021-07-05  5:22             ` Noel Hunt
2021-07-06  5:10           ` Nevin Liber
2021-07-06 13:30             ` Clem Cole
2021-07-06 16:23               ` Theodore Ts'o
2021-07-07  1:57                 ` Dan Cross
2021-07-07  2:52                   ` Larry McVoy
2021-07-07  5:19                     ` Andrew Warkentin
2021-07-07 18:28                   ` Jon Steinhart
2021-07-10 11:51                     ` [TUHS] " Ralph Corderoy
2021-07-10 13:54                       ` Henry Bent
2021-07-10 14:12                         ` Ralph Corderoy
2021-07-10 16:57                           ` [TUHS] Death by bug [formerly The Unix shell: a 50-year view] Jon Steinhart
2021-07-11  8:53                             ` [TUHS] Death by bug Ralph Corderoy
2021-07-11  9:04                               ` arnold
2021-07-12  1:42                                 ` Theodore Y. Ts'o
2021-07-12  2:57                                   ` Jon Steinhart
2021-07-12  6:39                                   ` arnold
2021-07-12  9:56                                   ` Ralph Corderoy
2021-07-11 16:10                               ` Jon Steinhart
2021-07-12 10:37                                 ` Ralph Corderoy
2021-07-06 13:40             ` [TUHS] [tuhs] The Unix shell: a 50-year view John Cowan
2021-07-06 14:12             ` Chet Ramey
2021-07-07  0:53               ` Nevin Liber
2021-07-07 13:08                 ` Chet Ramey
2021-07-07 15:15                   ` Richard Salz
2021-07-03  0:09   ` Andrew Warkentin
2021-07-03 15:49   ` Andy Kosela
2021-07-04 23:24     ` [TUHS] Is C obsolete? (was Re: [tuhs] The Unix shell: a 50-year view) Derek Fawcus
2021-07-04 23:50       ` Nemo Nusquam
2021-07-05  0:15         ` Dan Stromberg
2021-07-05  0:21       ` Larry McVoy
2021-07-05  2:36         ` John Cowan
2021-07-05  2:59           ` Richard Salz
2021-07-05  3:47           ` Larry McVoy
2021-07-05  4:02             ` Dan Stromberg
2021-07-05 13:45               ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2021-07-05 20:15                 ` Dan Stromberg
2021-07-05 21:05                   ` Larry McVoy
2021-07-05 21:29                   ` Clem Cole
2021-07-05 22:22                     ` Brantley Coile
2021-07-06  4:35                     ` Dan Stromberg
2021-07-06  4:44                       ` Warner Losh
2021-07-06  5:58                       ` Rico Pajarola
2021-07-06 13:05                       ` Clem Cole
2021-07-05 12:11         ` Thomas Paulsen
2021-07-05  4:08       ` Dan Stromberg
2021-07-05  4:23         ` George Michaelson
2021-07-05 14:43           ` Larry McVoy
2021-07-05 15:17             ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2021-07-05 15:36               ` Steffen Nurpmeso
2021-07-05 15:53       ` Mike Markowski
2021-07-05 16:39       ` Warner Losh
2021-07-05 19:02         ` Clem Cole
2021-07-02 22:27 ` Chet Ramey [this message]
2021-07-02 23:09 ` [TUHS] [tuhs] The Unix shell: a 50-year view Steve Nickolas

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