[TUHS] Unix APIs: elegant or not?

[ron minnich]

On Sun, Nov 4, 2018 at 9:06 AM Warner Losh <imp at bsdimp.com> wrote:
> Every other snowflake device had it's own config program that you had to run (or ioctls your data collection programs had to do). Setting up the sampling rates for the A2D, or the signal strength for an IRIG generator or whatever.


I'm not saying that having a name for everything solved the world's
problems. I'm saying that in Unix, as of the mid 1970s, things could
be named, including devices. And if you weren't using the other
systems available at the time, it's almost impossible to appreciate
just how important that was. I also used contemporary systems such as
OS/MVS, where even in the mid 70s we were accessing data sets by using
a disk and block #.

Although there is an analogy: do you prefer to name your personal
machine 2130706433 or localhost?

ron