30 Sep
2014
30 Sep
'14
1:52 p.m.
From: arnold(a)skeeve.com
it was clear at the time that UNIX and what was
happening was extremely
special .. Those of you who were there really were part of a "golden
age".
I once observed to Jerry Saltzer that when I started at the MIT CS labs, I
had been bummed because I had missed what I considered their 'Golden Age' -
the work on CTSS and Multics.
When I showed up there, I did a deal where they let me use a PDP-11/40 to
explore some OS ideas I had, if I woule write diagnostics on it for a ring
interface they were working on - part of a project on networking that
included work on something called internetworking.
I had no idea what I was getting into!
And of course the networking work soon sucked me in completely. In that
message to Jerry, I said something to the effect of 'clearly I've lived
through a second golden age, and only now am I understanding that'.
Noel