Re: [TUHS] First book on Unix for general readership

["Michael Kjörling" <michael@kjorling.se>]

On 4 Apr 2020 17:05 +0200, from meillo@marmaro.de (markus schnalke):
> found on Wikipedia:
> 
> 	As well as the Bourne shell, he wrote the adb debugger
> 	and The UNIX System, the second book on the UNIX system,
> 	intended for a general readership.
> 
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_R._Bourne
> 
> Thus I now wonder what the first book on Unix, intended for a
> general readership was.

I would be careful with that claim.

First, it appears to lack a citation. (Someone here might be able to help
with that.)

Second, once you unpack it, the claim itself can be parsed in two ways,
yielding quite different meanings.

One way of parsing the claim is that Bourne wrote the book _The UNIX
System_ which was the second book on the UNIX system. It was also a book
which was intended for a general readership, presumably thereby setting it
apart from the first book which was not intended for a general readership.

The other way of parsing the claim is that he wrote the book _The UNIX
System_ which was second in the set of intended-for-a-general-readership
books on the UNIX system (as opposed to the set of books on the UNIX
system which were intended for other than a general readership, or for
_any_ readership, of which there may have been any number prior to this
book), thereby setting it apart only from the first book on the UNIX
system intended for a general readership.

I'm not a good enough UNIX historian to know which meaning is correct.

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