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

Jon Steinhart jon at fourwinds.com
Sun Oct 13 11:57:47 AEST 2019


Well, I guess mine is kinda weird.  I had messed with a number of
computer systems a litle bit and then became proficient with 516-TSS
as a result of being part of the explorer scout post at BTL Murray
Hill in high school.  Interesting note is that one of my advisors
who wrote a lot of 516-TSS interviewed Ken for his job at BTL.
Ended up with a paid job at BTL starting near the end of my senior
year of high school.  Needed to document my work.  Don't remember
why, but my group acquired a PDP-11/40 that was across the hall
from the 516 lab in building 2 that was running UNIX version 3.
I started using roff on it to do my documentation which meant
learning ed and a bunch of other tools.  Of course, I took the
manual home and read it cover to cover and started messing around
with the various cool tools that it had and was hooked.

Jon


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