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

Doug McIlroy doug at cs.dartmouth.edu
Sat Oct 12 14:42:42 AEST 2019


For a contrast in aha moments, consider this introduction to
an early Apple (Apple II, I think).

When my wife got one, my natural curiosity led me to try to
make "Hello world".

I asked her what to use as an editor and learned it all depends
on what you're editing.

So I looked in the manual. First thing you do to make a C program
is to set up a "project", as if it was a corporate undertaking.

I found it easier to write a program in some other editor than
the one for C. Bad idea. Every file had a type and that editor
produced files of some type other than C program.

After succumbing to the Apple straitjacket, I succeeded.

Then I found "Hello world" given as an example in the manual.
The code took up almost a page; real men make programs that
set up their own windows.

Aha, Apple! Not intended for programmers.
And that didn't change until OS X.

Doug


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