From: dds@aueb.gr (Diomidis Spinellis)
Subject: [TUHS] Is the Teletype the unsung hero of Unix?
Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2016 23:03:59 +0200 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <56F5A7BF.4050300@aueb.gr> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <201603251443.u2PEh8OZ019856@skeeve.com>
On 25/03/2016 16:43, Aharon Robbins wrote:
> I have long theorized that the reason for the short names is that since
> typing was so physically demanding, it was natural to make the command
> names (and all the rest) be short and easier to type. I don't know if
> this was a conscious decision, but I suspect it more likely to have been
> an unconscious / natural one.
In a paper we will present at this year's International Conference on
Software Engineering we show (among other things) that the mean length
of identifiers in Unix C source code has risen from 3.5 to 7.5
characters from 1973 until today. We also observed a corresponding rise
in the length of lines and files. Better terminals can be one reason for
this rise. Other possible reasons may be increased software complexity
as well as CPU power and memory that allowed the processing of more
verbose code.
I've uploaded a preprint at
http://www.dmst.aueb.gr/dds/pubs/conf/2016-ICSE-ProgEvol/html/SLK16.pdf
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2016-03-25 21:03 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 26+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2016-03-25 14:43 Aharon Robbins
2016-03-25 19:47 ` Jaap Akkerhuis
2016-03-25 21:03 ` Diomidis Spinellis [this message]
2016-03-28 20:12 ` scj
2016-04-01 14:06 ` Dave Horsfall
2016-04-01 22:41 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2016-03-25 21:29 ` [TUHS] Command-line options Warren Toomey
2016-03-25 23:25 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2016-03-26 2:10 ` John Cowan
2016-03-26 3:09 ` Charles Anthony
2016-03-26 19:43 ` Clem Cole
2016-03-26 20:54 ` Ronald Natalie
2016-03-26 22:05 ` John Cowan
2016-03-27 1:25 ` Dave Horsfall
2016-03-27 1:50 ` Charles Anthony
2016-03-27 2:01 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2016-03-27 6:18 ` Random832
2016-03-27 6:57 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2016-03-27 19:38 ` Dave Horsfall
2016-03-27 1:35 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2016-03-26 3:54 ` [TUHS] Is the Teletype the unsung hero of Unix? Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2016-03-26 4:30 ` Steve Nickolas
2016-03-26 5:44 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2016-03-26 8:33 ` Steve Nickolas
[not found] <mailman.1.1459562401.20104.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
2016-04-02 2:17 ` Johnny Billquist
2016-04-02 2:35 ` Charles Anthony
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