> From: Arnold Skeeve
> K&R was so dense that my head was swimming after the first read.
I learned C from "Programming in C - A Tutorial", by Brian Kernighan, which
for some reason seemed to have fallen into desuetude from V7 on (at least,
that was the impression I got). Which was a pity, it was one of the best
documents I ever read - a breeze to read through, and clear as crystal.
Noel
Not sure I had an "aha erlebnis" with UNIX. I'd done some testing on a
Philips PTS6000 with T.O.S. All assembler code with debugging syslod
the most fun (breakpointing code which moves itself in memory). Then I
was a user on VAX 11/730, 11/750 with Ultrix which was a bit of a step
down. The VAXes run VMS during the week and only in weekends we could
place our disk pack and boot Ultrix. Funny feeling to go home when
colleagues arrive in the morning.
Later "Propriety UNIX" versions based on System III, 7, V. No source.
Still had shells, command line, scripts, a bit of programming in C if
all else fails (or is too slow). Never liked Windows. In that sense
maybe more an 'aha windows' moment to quickly forget :-)
Cheers,
uncle rubl
Well, I guess mine is kinda weird. I had messed with a number of
computer systems a litle bit and then became proficient with 516-TSS
as a result of being part of the explorer scout post at BTL Murray
Hill in high school. Interesting note is that one of my advisors
who wrote a lot of 516-TSS interviewed Ken for his job at BTL.
Ended up with a paid job at BTL starting near the end of my senior
year of high school. Needed to document my work. Don't remember
why, but my group acquired a PDP-11/40 that was across the hall
from the 516 lab in building 2 that was running UNIX version 3.
I started using roff on it to do my documentation which meant
learning ed and a bunch of other tools. Of course, I took the
manual home and read it cover to cover and started messing around
with the various cool tools that it had and was hooked.
Jon
> From: Tony Travis
> It's always puzzled me when everyone talks about [the] PDP11 when, in
> fact, is says "pdp11" on the system itself:
DEC documentation mostly used uppercase in the text; e.g. the "pdp11
peripherals handbook" (to transcribe the cover exactly) uses "PDP-11"
several times on pg 1-1.
Noel
> From: Warren Toomey
> What was your "ahah" moment when you first saw that Unix was special,
> especially compared to the systems you'd previously used?
Sometime in my undergrad sophmore year, IIRC. A friend had a undergrad
research thing with DSSR, who I think at that point had the first UNIX at
MIT. He showed me the system, and wrote a tiny command in C, compiled it, and
executed the binary from the shell.
No big deal, right? Well, at that point ('75 or so), the only OS's I had used
were RSTS-11, a batch system running on an Interdata (programs were submitted
on card decks), the DELPHI system (done by the people in DSSR), and a few
similar things. I had never used a system where an ordinary user could 'add' a
command to the command interpreter, and was blown away. (At that point in
time, not many OS's could do that.)
Unix was in a whole different world compared to contemporaneous PDP-11
OS's. It felt like a 'mainframe' OS (background jobs, etc), but on a mini.
Noel
For a contrast in aha moments, consider this introduction to
an early Apple (Apple II, I think).
When my wife got one, my natural curiosity led me to try to
make "Hello world".
I asked her what to use as an editor and learned it all depends
on what you're editing.
So I looked in the manual. First thing you do to make a C program
is to set up a "project", as if it was a corporate undertaking.
I found it easier to write a program in some other editor than
the one for C. Bad idea. Every file had a type and that editor
produced files of some type other than C program.
After succumbing to the Apple straitjacket, I succeeded.
Then I found "Hello world" given as an example in the manual.
The code took up almost a page; real men make programs that
set up their own windows.
Aha, Apple! Not intended for programmers.
And that didn't change until OS X.
Doug
I miss Brian on this list. I've interacted with him over the years, the
one I remember the most was I was trying to do an awk like interface to a
key/value "database". I talked to him about it and he sent me ~bwk/awk
which had all the original awk source and the troff source to the awk
book in english and french.
Ken, Doug, Rob, Steve, anyone, could you coax him onto this list?
If you want me to try first I will, I don't know if he remembers me
or not. But I can try and then maybe one of you follow up?
All, we just had about a dozen new subscribers to the TUHS list. Rather than
e-mail you all individually, I thought I'd use the list itself to say
"Welcome!".
The TUHS list generally has a high signal/noise ratio on the history of
Unix, the systems and software, and anecdotes from those who used the
various flavours. Occasionally, we drift a bit off-topic and I'll gently
nudge the conversation back to Unix history.
The list archives are at: https://minnie.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/
and you should browse the last couple of months to get a feel for
what we talk about.
Cheers, Warren
https://bsdimp.blogspot.com/2019/10/video-footage-of-first-pdp-7-to-run-uni…
is a blog entry where I step through the evidence that the PDP-7 in The
Incredible Machine video that was posted here a while ago is quite likely
the PDP-7 Ken used to create Unix after its days of starting in Bell Labs
films were over...
Warner
