2 May
2022
2 May
'22
6:59 p.m.
Compiles before the return key
That phrase as i recall it i have associated with the Amdahl mainframe, not
IBM. Anyone else recall this event at a USENIX conference???
They released a C Compiler for it and I think also a unix version for it.
the phrase that they coined to indicate the shear speed of it at the time
went something like this -
You can compile the entire UNIX kernel in the debounce time of the return
key.
It was part of the presentation on their C compiler implementation. Perhaps
it was IBM and I need to replace some faulty core and rebuild some database
indices......
The phrase has been stuck in my head ever since.
On Sun, May 1, 2022, 10:43 PM Phil Budne <phil(a)ultimate.com> wrote:
Ron Minnich wrote:
in terms of rewrites from manuals, while it was
not the first, as I
understand it, AIX was an example of "read the manual, write the
code."
My memory, from having a "finger" program that tried to display the
foreground/active process for each tty/login/utmp entry, is that there
it was possible there were multiple code bases (tho it's possible
there was just one, and it mutated wildly across major versions), all
called "AIX" (and as my old boss, Barry Shein (BZS) at Boston
University said, they all "will remind you of Unix"), there were (at
least) versions for:
RT PC
RS/6000 (POWER, PowerPC)
PS/2
I never had access to AIX/370, but BZS got a chance to try it out in a
VM on the academic computing S/390, and ISTR he said it finished
compiles before you hit return.
There was also a (pretty clean, ISTR) port of 4.3 BSD to the RT called
"ACIS", but it might only have been available to academic sites.
My memory is also that IBM had a very broad license for SVR2 and when
the Open Software Foundation came together (with people who weren't
AT&T or Sun), IBM was able to offer that up as a code base.
gether,