[TUHS] Version 8 will never come out!

[Will Senn]

Reading in the AUUGN vol 1 number 4, p. 15 in letter dated April 5, 
1979, from Alistair Kilgour, Glasgow writing to Ian Johnstone, New South 
Wales about a Unix meeting in the U.K. at University of Kent at 
Caterbury (150 attended the meeting) with Ken Thompson and Brian 
Kernighan...

Two paragraphs that I found interesting and fun:

     Most U.K. users were astonished to hear that one thing which has 
_not_ changed in Version 7 is the default for "delete character" and 
"delete line" in the teletype handler - we thought we'd seen the last of 
# and @! What was very clear was that version 7 is a "snapshot" of a 
still developing system, and indeed neither speaker seemed quite sure of 
when the snapshot was taken or exactly what it contained. The general 
feeling among users at the meeting was that the new tools provided with 
version 7 were too good to resist (though many had doubts about the new 
Shell). We were however relieved by the assurance that there would 
_never_ be a version 8!
...
     Finally a quotation, attributed to Steve Johnstone, with which 
Brian Kernighan introduced his excellent sales campaign for Unix on the 
first day of the conference: " Using TSO is like kicking a dead whale 
along the beach". Unix rules.
...

I knew it, it's not just me - those pesky # and @ characters were and 
still are really annoying! Oh, and never say never. Unix does rule :).

Will

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