9 Mar
2025
9 Mar
'25
2:05 a.m.
As for the Unix Way (tm) I think the folks at PARC were honestly puzzled,
if they thought about it at all. Most were Tenex sorts of folks, or
interested in languages, GUIs, and distributed computing. Unix was time
sharing, and something you did if you didn't have your own computer.
I was at PARC in 1984, working with Dan Ingalls. I mentioned I was
surprised that Smalltalk had no concurrency†, that the UI (let alone the
system) was completely single-threaded. Only the window with focus could
execute any code. Dan being Dan, he immediately got to work making a form
of concurrency happen, followed by a delightful orgy of researches playing
with the new toy. I loved it.
Because: sometimes in isolation you miss important things going on in the
outside world.
-rob
† The starting idea for the Blit né Jerq‡ was bringing a UI to Unix that
supported parallel execution, after a demo of the Three Rivers Perqs at
Lucasfilm, an emulation of the Alto, and seeing only missed opportunities.
‡ The name "Jerq" was Lucasfilm's own moniker for the Perq, and we asked
them for permission to use it, which they happily provided.