[TUHS] What was your "Aha, Unix!" moment?

[Larry McVoy]

On Fri, Oct 11, 2019 at 01:13:37PM -0400, Jim Geist wrote:
> My college had a big schism between the computer services department that
> serviced the whole school -- they ran an IBM 4341 with VM/SP -- and the
> actual computer science department that ran UNIX on a VAX-11/780. Undergrad
> classes were mostly on the mainframe and grad students used the VAX. I
> learned C on the mainframe but was able to talk my way into a UNIX account
> and started seeing how much more elegant things were.

Our CS department had a mainframe as well, also a handful of 11/750s and
11/780s.  The compiler class was taught on the mainframe, the prof had
a lex/yacc clone he had written and wanted us to use that.

My buddy Rob Netzer and I had 3B1 (Unix PC) or maybe 2, I think I had
one as well, and we asked the prof if we could do the class on those.
Rob had to write the lex/yacc clone to be compat with the profs, he
did and we happily avoided using the mainframe.  We were very sold
on Unix by then.