The Unix Heritage Society mailing list
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
From: Rob Pike <robpike@gmail.com>
To: Jon Steinhart <jon@fourwinds.com>
Cc: TUHS main list <tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>, Eugene Miya <eugene@soe.ucsc.edu>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] A New History of Modern Computing - my thoughts
Date: Mon, 29 Nov 2021 09:17:24 +1100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <CAKzdPgxBsFeKRvCktiQvoDOHOMW5M1QuH70VeZBL8cJN9XKNCA@mail.gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <202111282147.1ASLlND41439656@darkstar.fourwinds.com>

It's a just-so story. We have nostalgia for Unix, C, and the PDP-11
and its instruction set, and we combine them all into the story about
why it all succeeded. But nostalgia can mislead.

I loved the PDP-11 and its instruction set, I loved C, and I loved
Unix. Memory has put causation in there that is not altogether true.

The PDP-11 as an affordable commercial computer, now _that_ was important.

-rob

On Mon, Nov 29, 2021 at 8:50 AM Jon Steinhart <jon@fourwinds.com> wrote:
>
> Ken Thompson writes:
> >
> > The PDP-11 had very little the syntax of B expressions.
> > All of that was in place in B long before the PDP-11.
> > To be honest, the byte addressing of the 11 was a
> > significant hindrance. It was the genius of Dennis
> > that was able to conquer the 11 as he installed types
> > into the language.
> >
> > So, my opinion, the PDP-11 had no design on the
> > type system of C and moreover it was not even helpful.
>
> OK then.  You *would* be the expert.

  reply	other threads:[~2021-11-28 22:19 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 29+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2021-11-28 20:26 Jon Steinhart
2021-11-28 21:07 ` Rob Pike
2021-11-28 21:15   ` Jon Steinhart
2021-11-28 21:31     ` Ken Thompson
2021-11-28 21:47       ` Jon Steinhart
2021-11-28 22:17         ` Rob Pike [this message]
2021-11-29  0:19           ` Clem Cole
2021-11-29  1:12             ` Larry McVoy
2021-11-29  2:23               ` Bakul Shah
2021-11-30 19:27                 ` Ralph Corderoy
2021-12-01  8:46                   ` Rich Morin
2021-12-01 12:28                     ` Al Kossow
2021-11-30  3:18               ` Larry McVoy
2021-11-29  1:18             ` George Michaelson
2021-11-29  1:36             ` Bakul Shah
2021-11-29  1:47       ` Bakul Shah
2021-11-29  7:46         ` arnold
2021-11-29  7:52           ` arnold
2021-11-29 14:44             ` Larry McVoy
2021-11-29 12:11         ` Michael Kjörling
2021-11-28 21:23   ` Thomas Paulsen
2021-11-28 21:39     ` Steve Nickolas
2021-11-28 22:41       ` Ron Natalie
2021-11-28 21:40   ` Larry McVoy
2021-11-29 15:37 ` Phil Budne
2021-11-28 23:12 Noel Chiappa
2021-11-28 23:35 ` Adam Thornton
2021-11-29  1:53   ` John Cowan
2021-11-29 13:48   ` Dan Halbert

Reply instructions:

You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:

* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
  and reply-to-all from there: mbox

  Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style

* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
  switches of git-send-email(1):

  git send-email \
    --in-reply-to=CAKzdPgxBsFeKRvCktiQvoDOHOMW5M1QuH70VeZBL8cJN9XKNCA@mail.gmail.com \
    --to=robpike@gmail.com \
    --cc=eugene@soe.ucsc.edu \
    --cc=jon@fourwinds.com \
    --cc=tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org \
    /path/to/YOUR_REPLY

  https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html

* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
  via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line before the message body.
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).