10 Jul
2021
10 Jul
'21
4:19 a.m.
On Tue, Jul 06, 2021 at 12:05:04PM -0400, Clem Cole wrote:
[...]
Ouch!!! This is so much important that you have missed
in this statement,
as this is a great example of not seeing the forest because of all the
trees. You are right that C and UNIX's success was intertwined but I think
you are missing the drivers for that. They were successful because of
other things and because they were successful, we have them today.
[...]
Clem, thanks a lot for writing this. I think I have connected few dots
now. Like, I was long aware that there were various groups of computer
users, but never before I had the thought about how this "divide"
contributed so much to creation and adoption of Unix.
I suppose I like Unix even more now.
[...]
The idea of lots of little programs that cooperate
with each other is not
what IBM and the like wanted/was providing. They were selling closed
'solutions' complete SW systems ("walled gardens" controlled by them
or
their programming minions) and yes needed the big iron they sold. Note
the IBM 'solutions were not sold to engineers, their products were sold on
the golf course to the 'managers' of what we know call IT shops.
Ahem. I do not see myself selling or buying during golf
course... Especially if it has to do with computers...
[...]
The important thing is that the latter group (not
enterprise) did not have
as much money but was a completely different population. UNIX is 100% a
'Christiansen style Disruption' ( read his book completely if you have
not, please).
I will see if I can have my hand on it.
It's a 'lessor technology,' running on
smaller equipment,
targeting a new and different consumer who does not care that it is 'not as
good' as the established products. If you compare UNIX to IBM's OS or VMS
for that matter, UNIX does not have the 'features' that are valued by the
'enterprise market.'
Ken/Dennis, *et al*, clearly do not care -- they were building something
they (the engineers) needed and wanted (thankfully). And yes it had to run
on modest hardware because that is what they could afford and had access
to. But because since the HW was modest, that forces a mindset of what are
we really doing on the SW? How can we do it effectively. The designers
are asking an important research question? *Maybe some of these other
schemes are not necessary*.
I definitely like this attitude.
You are correct the C grew because of UNIX, but you
kind of have it
backward. I'm a perfect example of what happened. These new
microprocessors from Intel/Zilog/Moto/MOS Tech became available to us
(engineers mind you). Hey, I was at CMU in the mid-1970s, I even had
access to the BLISS sources, but most people did not. A BLISS cross
compiler binary cost $5K per CPU!!!
Yikes. Five kilodollars, what a deal.
When I learned C, in middle/late 80-ties, it was my third language
after Basic and Pascal. I did not have computer at that time and I
wrote short programs in a notebook. I wonder if I could locate the
notebook and if any of this code would run. But, compared to the first
two, C had something fresh in it. Nowadays, however, this freshness is
a little bit trapped under a ton of supporting libraries. Back at the
time, the fact there was a C compiler on every computer I heard about,
and standard library gave it a bit of unified look, and I could write
C oneliners on less paper, more idiomatic (saves time! all those
begin/end words replaced by mere curly braces, very nice) - all of
this made C very interesting to me.
[...]
The key point is that UNIX was inexpensive and worked
on modest hardware.
Yes C came with it and that is why I think we use it not BLISS, BCPL, or
some flavor of PLx today.
I hope C would have been invented even without Unix.
--
Regards,
Tomasz Rola
--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature. **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened... **
** **
** Tomasz Rola mailto:tomasz_rola@bigfoot.com **