From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.2 (2018-09-13) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.7 required=5.0 tests=DKIM_SIGNED,DKIM_VALID, DKIM_VALID_AU,FREEMAIL_FORGED_FROMDOMAIN,FREEMAIL_FROM, HEADER_FROM_DIFFERENT_DOMAINS,HTML_MESSAGE,MAILING_LIST_MULTI, PLING_QUERY,RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.2 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (minnie.tuhs.org [45.79.103.53]) by inbox.vuxu.org (OpenSMTPD) with ESMTP id 60f8a5a9 for ; Sun, 13 Oct 2019 01:39:14 +0000 (UTC) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id CB7169BBCF; Sun, 13 Oct 2019 11:39:12 +1000 (AEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E0D019B962; Sun, 13 Oct 2019 11:38:31 +1000 (AEST) Authentication-Results: minnie.tuhs.org; dkim=pass (2048-bit key; unprotected) header.d=gmail.com header.i=@gmail.com header.b="vIC1ZAjU"; dkim-atps=neutral Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id A55C49B8B2; Sun, 13 Oct 2019 11:38:27 +1000 (AEST) Received: from mail-qt1-f180.google.com (mail-qt1-f180.google.com [209.85.160.180]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 0CBC39B844; Sun, 13 Oct 2019 11:38:27 +1000 (AEST) Received: by mail-qt1-f180.google.com with SMTP id u22so19789475qtq.13; Sat, 12 Oct 2019 18:38:26 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20161025; h=mime-version:references:in-reply-to:from:date:message-id:subject:to :cc; bh=+p9dk450rpD2TimboRB53Brr4tQhlNUUA+eYLzDT56E=; b=vIC1ZAjUeecDIpD3lI5IC8PFesx82C8L1SuwnSUG16V3udC/TTeUa3u5RIUOJuLuti dBM5mA9wqjHeNa7dYTc/vfC5V73bnessTcrOWYeQtfkU3iAjhMLED7A5/k7+ygzOdEzh qkudGwatpJ6DgsveE0vW/JFOSPZjSLOnQ/Isn3SQacBfaXugjx5OscZ2CnqdNFTD6mCi 6hpLlplMK+kuZw2sbvoHW04lsCJCJtkG7KX0+nqPa5qeB8lnG+v8M97RUOZYxuWN/KEo Bir5L2poimuyHJYoqGhavnzpJdcGtZMQZKhf7W73o592+mllTLQLdprvRyJeOJfMQe// TNjg== X-Google-DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=1e100.net; s=20161025; h=x-gm-message-state:mime-version:references:in-reply-to:from:date :message-id:subject:to:cc; bh=+p9dk450rpD2TimboRB53Brr4tQhlNUUA+eYLzDT56E=; b=eW7wmsZP53QAEZLfct9JKYOsKtcmHfV+efSPQUALpz2KutaB9LuP4ehMqfW19z2xNW tza64BWukbLVEhOnwIC7wteBgjHUqwMJztDgF6Oyfx/B6theyyTTT7l646v12iidZvpz WX0o7sOvsqkaEgcmvI4Gf/DV4N2kq/B7uVF/j1MqXgm1lsxEJxjnkJv+Qcmd/ix8p2TW TGZGfW4mdfCMGOmJulk1hFoTf2fSwjQ9yMgdT+m+ptkmiP6cSCi3hLm/BSHwrqVARBe2 0K4iEcvuT8U+o17twAzLzk485FO00y+idk7ljpvNIpPQNF5q5n6bMiJdk6Q+6ohvyIrs 2h/A== X-Gm-Message-State: APjAAAX8A0YzJu180TBK/b6Mb3SITa22L7OVKtphpBSXKUNu+3bzbn6m 0pnChMOv9BanudfrAyUNGDOdzQD2xlR06cKJ93tFlZ8q X-Google-Smtp-Source: APXvYqwyY+TPPgHMZ8wyzFVPLQc4P7AbdZjVdQy6I93J3xEiYKPpjrbvcOeYja+xqIcWwXCot83WjZUwH2G9xPhjLF4= X-Received: by 2002:a05:6214:1406:: with SMTP id n6mr24721609qvx.214.1570930705507; Sat, 12 Oct 2019 18:38:25 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <20191010205546.GA29154@minnie.tuhs.org> In-Reply-To: <20191010205546.GA29154@minnie.tuhs.org> From: Dan Cross Date: Sat, 12 Oct 2019 21:37:49 -0400 Message-ID: To: Warren Toomey Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="000000000000ab2b6b0594c0ceb3" Subject: Re: [TUHS] What was your "Aha, Unix!" moment? 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: , Cc: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org Sender: "TUHS" --000000000000ab2b6b0594c0ceb3 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" On Thu, Oct 10, 2019 at 4:56 PM Warren Toomey wrote: > All, we had another dozen TUHS suscribers to the list overnight. Welcome. > A reminder that we're here to discuss Unix Heritage, so I'll nudge you > if the conversation goes a bit off-topic. > > So I'll kick off another thread. What was your "ahah" moment when you > first saw that Unix was special, especially compared to the systems you'd > previously used? > > Mine was: Oh, I can: > + write a simple script > + to edit a file on the fly > + with no temporary files (a la pipes) > + AND I can change the file suffix and the system won't stop me! > > I was using TOPS-20 beforehand. > I'm afraid I have a rather pedestrian story. Like many folks in the 80s, we had a home computer, and in early high school I got kind of hooked on this idea of using a modem to call other computers. I remember one of the kids at school telling me, "don't use DOS unless you're afraid of speed." At the time, I had no real conception of what that meant, nor how fundamentally wrong it was, but hey, ok. Our home machine was actually a Mac, but I managed to convince the family that a PC clone running DOS would be a better machine. Dad relented, a suitable machine was acquired and while it is likely the thing would have become another object gather dust, an unfortunate encounter with a solid object at a high rate of speed basically ended my changes of becoming a professional skateboarder and the (new) computer filled the void. As I was recuperating from that broken collar bone, I got into the idea of learning C. My dad, an engineer, mentioned to me that the folks at his company were using Sun machines and the word "Unix" hung in the air. It was mysterious and cool. Eventually, I saved up enough money to order a copy of Coherent, which while interesting, was abstruse and opaque: let's face it, DOS was written to drive what amounted to souped up microcontrollers; things were pretty understandable in that world once you achieved a basic level of competence. But this Unix thing sounded intriguing and I wanted to learn more. Getting access was a challenge. Coherent didn't really seem like the thing. About a year of DOS and some Coherent later, I fell in with a crowd of undergrads at the local university who were mostly CS/EE/Math majors and that cemented things: it pains me somewhat to admit it, but I got into Unix because that's what the cool kids were doing. I ditched DOS and Coherent and installed NetBSD. Interestingly, I found a Linux distribution somewhere, and we had that running in a lab for a while, but it didn't stick; I still thought BSD was better and at the time, that was probably (technically) true. Besides, we were mostly running RISC machines running various commercial Unix variants; the BSD/Linux stuff was just for messing around and/or for home use. The one unique quirk in this anecdote is that, at some point, I did two weird things: 1) I saw an ad locally for a guy selling a DECstation running Ultrix and I bought it. I could never get X to work on my 486, but it sure worked on the DECstation, so I had a graphical environment at home. 2) I bought a VAX off USENET. Not a "real" VAX in the 10th edition sense, but a desktop VAXstation. I ran VMS on that. Both of those machines are probably still down in my basement somewhere.... Anyway, while the kids were running Linux at home, most people I knew really wanted a RISC workstation and I had one as well as a personal VAX. That definitely gave me some street cred for a while. At some point I had learned enough technically to realize that Unix really was better than the alternatives I had access to; I liked VMS, but it was specific to a limited set of hardware and seemed more complex than Unix for little benefit. Some people claimed it was simpler, though; I'm not sure in what sense they meant, even today. Some of the college folks I was spending time with used the local mainframe (VM/ESA) a fair bit and RSCS was a big deal locally. I played around with it, but never found it all that interesting; it seemed to me that Unix did everything the mainframe could do, but, well, better. So yeah, that's it: it's kind of sad, but I ran Unix because people told me Unix was better. And while on the one hand it was obviously better than DOS, I had limited exposure to other systems from which to form a real opinion about its relative merits with respect to similarly ambitious designs. I see now the superiority of the design relative to other common systems of the day, but that's a perspective developed after the fact, as opposed to something that I saw or felt at the time. One more aside here: Doug lambasted the Macintosh earlier, but in retrospect I'm really glad that our first computer was a Mac. It was never a machine that was designed for command-line use; hence why something was simple as "Hello, World!" would be so complex. But it did have a regularity of interface and was simple enough that for years I never realized a computer could be any different. I didn't appreciate the value of those early lessons and how they shaped how I thought about how a system should work until much, much later. - Dan C. --000000000000ab2b6b0594c0ceb3 Content-Type: text/html; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
On Thu, Oct 10, 2019 at 4:56 PM Warr= en Toomey <wkt@tuhs.org> wrote:
All, we had another dozen TUHS suscribers to the list overn= ight. Welcome.
A reminder that we're here to discuss Unix Heritage, so I'll nudge = you
if the conversation goes a bit off-topic.

So I'll kick off another thread. What was your "ahah" moment = when you
first saw that Unix was special, especially compared to the systems you'= ;d
previously used?

Mine was: Oh, I can:
=C2=A0 + write a simple script
=C2=A0 + to edit a file on the fly
=C2=A0 + with no temporary files (a la pipes)
=C2=A0 + AND I can change the file suffix and the system won't stop me!=

I was using TOPS-20 beforehand.

I'm= afraid I have=C2=A0a rather pedestrian=C2=A0story. Like many folks in the = 80s, we had a home computer, and in early high school I got kind of hooked = on this idea of using a modem to call other computers. I remember one of th= e kids at school telling me, "don't use DOS unless you're afra= id of speed." At the time, I had no real conception of what that meant= , nor how fundamentally wrong it was, but hey, ok. Our home machine was act= ually a Mac, but I managed to convince the family that a PC clone running D= OS would be a better machine.

Dad relented, a suit= able machine was acquired and while it is likely the thing would have becom= e another object gather dust, an unfortunate encounter with a solid object = at a high rate of speed basically ended my changes of becoming a profession= al skateboarder and the (new) computer filled the void. As I was recuperati= ng from that broken collar bone, I got into the idea of learning C.

My dad, an engineer, mentioned to me that the folks at hi= s company were using Sun machines and the word "Unix" hung in the= air. It was mysterious and cool. Eventually, I saved up enough money to or= der a copy of Coherent, which while interesting, was abstruse and opaque: l= et's face it, DOS was written to drive what amounted to souped up micro= controllers; things were pretty understandable in that world once you achie= ved a basic level of competence. But this Unix thing sounded intriguing and= I wanted to learn more. Getting access was a challenge. Coherent didn'= t really seem like the thing.

About a year of DOS = and some Coherent later, I fell in with a crowd of undergrads at the local = university who were mostly CS/EE/Math majors and that cemented things: it p= ains me somewhat to admit it, but I got into Unix because that's what t= he cool kids were doing. I ditched DOS and Coherent and installed NetBSD. I= nterestingly, I found a Linux distribution somewhere, and we had that runni= ng in a lab for a while, but it didn't stick; I still thought BSD was b= etter and at the time, that was probably (technically) true. Besides, we we= re mostly running RISC machines running various commercial Unix variants; t= he BSD/Linux stuff was just for messing around and/or for home use.

The one unique quirk in this anecdote is that, at some po= int, I did two weird things: 1) I saw an ad locally for a guy selling a DEC= station running Ultrix and I bought it. I could never get X to work on my 4= 86, but it sure worked on the DECstation, so I had a graphical environment = at home. 2) I bought a VAX off USENET. Not a "real" VAX in the 10= th edition sense, but a desktop VAXstation. I ran VMS on that. Both of thos= e machines are probably still down in my basement somewhere.... Anyway, whi= le the kids were running Linux at home, most people I knew really wanted a = RISC workstation and I had one as well as a personal VAX. That definitely g= ave me some street cred for a while.

At some point= I had learned enough technically to realize that Unix really was better th= an the alternatives I had access to; I liked VMS, but it was specific to a = limited set of hardware and seemed more complex than Unix for little benefi= t. Some people claimed it was simpler, though; I'm not sure in what sen= se they meant, even today. Some of the college folks I was spending time wi= th used the local mainframe (VM/ESA) a fair bit and RSCS was a big deal loc= ally. I played around with it, but never found it all that interesting; it = seemed to me that Unix did everything the mainframe could do, but, well, be= tter.

So yeah, that's it: it's = kind of sad, but I ran Unix because people told me Unix was better. And whi= le on the one hand it was obviously better than DOS, I had limited exposure= to other systems from which to form a real opinion about its relative meri= ts with respect to similarly ambitious designs. I see now the superiority o= f the design relative to other common systems of the day, but that's a = perspective developed after the fact, as opposed to something that I saw or= felt at the time.

One more aside here: Doug lamba= sted the Macintosh earlier, but in retrospect I'm really glad that our = first computer was a Mac. It was never a machine that was designed for comm= and-line use; hence why something was simple as "Hello, World!" w= ould be so complex. But it did have a regularity of interface and was simpl= e enough that for years I never realized a computer could be any different.= I didn't appreciate the value of those early lessons and how they shap= ed how I thought about how a system should work until much, much=C2=A0 late= r.

=C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 =C2=A0 - Dan C.
=
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