[TUHS] Re: Has this been discussed on-list? How Unix changed Software.

[steve jenkin <sjenkin@canb.auug.org.au>]

Doug, Larry et al,

Thanks very much for the history - unaware of those stories/ facts.
I’ve scanned the 1989 Miller et al paper, will read properly soon.
The legacy of that paper is the extensive automatic testing now commonplace in large Open Software projects.

I wasn't clear in what I wrote. Have been immersed in early papers of teaching the kernel at UNSW :(
Reminds on this list precise terms matter: that “Unix” / UNIX (tm) and "the kernel" (+ version) are very different.

I meant the V5 / V6 kernel was ‘known defect free', hadn’t thought of Userland / utilities & libraries :(
From what I’ve read: distribution tapes, pre-USG, were created from the current copy of ’the system’ - not sure which machine that was, presumably one controlled by Ken.

Is that a reasonable statement, the kernel, pre-USG, had zero (known) Technical Debt when shipped?

I’ve read that Ken wrote the kernel with an eye to it being a coding exemplar.
Deliberately wrote consistent, high quality code.

Is that another mis-interpretation of mine?

regards
steve j

> On 7 Sep 2022, at 01:07, Douglas McIlroy <douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu> wrote:
> 
>> (Research) Unix ... 'shipped' with zero known bugs.
> 
> It wasn't a Utopia. Right from the start man pages reported BUGS,
> though many were infelicities, not implementation errors.

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Steve Jenkin, IT Systems and Design 
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