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.
next prev parent 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
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