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=-1.0 required=5.0 tests=MAILING_LIST_MULTI autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 6343 invoked from network); 28 Nov 2021 21:25:07 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (45.79.103.53) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 28 Nov 2021 21:25:07 -0000 Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 298699CF30; Mon, 29 Nov 2021 07:25:05 +1000 (AEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id B8E3D94613; Mon, 29 Nov 2021 07:23:15 +1000 (AEST) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 9958994613; Mon, 29 Nov 2021 07:23:13 +1000 (AEST) Received: from firemail.de (firemail.de [88.99.137.45]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id D3C2894586 for ; Mon, 29 Nov 2021 07:23:11 +1000 (AEST) Received: from firemail.de (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by firemail.de (b1gMailServer) with ESMTP id 1EA16741 for ; Sun, 28 Nov 2021 22:23:09 +0100 (CET) Date: Sun, 28 Nov 2021 22:23:09 +0100 MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-ID: <811d4e0a0c4cd210261b84df286ff53a@firemail.de> X-Mailer: b1gMail/7.4.0 X-Sender-IP: 84.149.191.49 From: "Thomas Paulsen" To: "Rob Pike" In-Reply-To: References: <202111282026.1ASKQ5X41437843@darkstar.fourwinds.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline X-Abuse-Report: abuse@emailn.de Subject: Re: [TUHS] A New History of Modern Computing - my thoughts 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: , Reply-To: Thomas Paulsen Cc: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org, eugene@soe.ucsc.edu Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org Sender: "TUHS" I heard that the null terminated string was a 11-build-in. --- ------------------------------ Is there a symbiosis between C and the PDP-11 instruction set? The machine was vital to C and Unix's success, but primarily due to the availability of a department-sized machine. Was the instruction set a significant component? Most Unix programmers wrote little to no assembly, although perhaps more read what came out of the compiler. But did it matter? Auto-increment and -decrement are often cited in this story, but they are not that important, really, and were around well before the PDP-11 made its appearance. I'm curious to hear arguments on either side. -rob On Mon, Nov 29, 2021 at 7:29 AM Jon Steinhart wrote: > > Eugene Miya visited by last week and accidentally left his copy of the > book here so I decided to read it before he came back to pick it up. > > My overall impression is that while it contained a lot of information, > it wasn't presented in a manner that I found interesting. I don't know > the intended target audience, but it's not me. > > A good part of it is that my interest is in the evolution of technology. > I think that a more accurate title for the book would be "A New History > of the Business of Modern Computing". The book was thorough in covering > the number of each type of machine sold and how much money was made, but > that's only of passing interest to me. Were it me I would have just > summarized all that in a table and used the space to tell some engaging > anecdotes. > > There were a number of things that I felt the book glossed over or missed > completely. > > One is that I didn't think that they gave sufficient credit to the symbio= sis > between C and the PDP-11 instruction set and the degree to which the PDP-11 > was enormously influential. > > Another is that I felt that the book didn't give computer graphics adequa= te > treatment. I realize that it was primarily in the workstation market segment > which was not as large as some of the other segments, but in my opinion the > development of the technology was hugely important as it eventually became > commodified and highly profitable. > > Probably due to my personal involvement I felt that the book missed some > important steps along the path toward open source. In particular, it used > the IPO of Red Hat as the seminal moment while not even mentioning the role > of Cygnus. My opinion is that Cygnus was a huge icebreaker in the adopti= on > of open source by the business world, and that the Red Hat IPO was just the > culmination. > > I also didn't feel that there was any message or takeaways for readers. I > didn't get any "based on all this I should go and do that" sort of feeling. > > If the purpose of the book was to present a dry history then it pretty much > did it's job. Obviously the authors had to pick and choose what to write > about and I would have made some different choices. But, not my book. > > Jon