[TUHS] [tuhs] The Unix shell: a 50-year view

[Tomasz Rola]

On Tue, Jul 06, 2021 at 12:05:04PM -0400, Clem Cole wrote:
[...]
> Ouch!!! This is so much important that you have missed in this statement,
> as this is a great example of not seeing the forest because of all the
> trees.  You are right that C and UNIX's success was intertwined but I think
> you are missing the drivers for that.   They were successful because of
> other things and because they were successful, we have them today.
[...]

Clem, thanks a lot for writing this. I think I have connected few dots
now. Like, I was long aware that there were various groups of computer
users, but never before I had the thought about how this "divide"
contributed so much to creation and adoption of Unix.

I suppose I like Unix even more now.

[...]
> The idea of lots of little programs that cooperate with each other is not
> what IBM and the like wanted/was providing.  They were selling closed
> 'solutions' complete SW systems ("walled gardens" controlled by them or
> their programming minions) and yes needed the big iron they sold.  Note
> the IBM 'solutions were not sold to engineers, their products were sold on
> the golf course to the 'managers' of what we know call IT shops.

Ahem. I do not see myself selling or buying during golf
course... Especially if it has to do with computers...

[...]
> The important thing is that the latter group (not enterprise) did not have
> as much money but was a completely different population.   UNIX is 100% a
> 'Christiansen style Disruption'  ( read his book completely if you have
> not, please).

I will see if I can have my hand on it.

>  It's a 'lessor technology,' running on smaller equipment,
> targeting a new and different consumer who does not care that it is 'not as
> good' as the established products.  If you compare UNIX to IBM's OS or VMS
> for that matter, UNIX does not have the 'features' that are valued by the
> 'enterprise market.'
> 
> Ken/Dennis, *et al*, clearly do not care -- they were building something
> they (the engineers) needed and wanted (thankfully).  And yes it had to run
> on modest hardware because that is what they could afford and had access
> to.  But because since the HW was modest, that forces a mindset of what are
> we really doing on the SW?  How can we do it effectively.  The designers
> are asking an important research question? *Maybe some of these other
> schemes are not necessary*.

I definitely like this attitude.

> You are correct the C grew because of UNIX, but you kind of have it
> backward. I'm a perfect example of what happened.  These new
> microprocessors from Intel/Zilog/Moto/MOS Tech became available to us
> (engineers mind you).  Hey, I was at CMU in the mid-1970s, I even had
> access to the BLISS sources, but most people did not.  A BLISS cross
> compiler binary cost $5K per CPU!!!

Yikes. Five kilodollars, what a deal.

When I learned C, in middle/late 80-ties, it was my third language
after Basic and Pascal. I did not have computer at that time and I
wrote short programs in a notebook. I wonder if I could locate the
notebook and if any of this code would run. But, compared to the first
two, C had something fresh in it. Nowadays, however, this freshness is
a little bit trapped under a ton of supporting libraries. Back at the
time, the fact there was a C compiler on every computer I heard about,
and standard library gave it a bit of unified look, and I could write
C oneliners on less paper, more idiomatic (saves time! all those
begin/end words replaced by mere curly braces, very nice) - all of
this made C very interesting to me.

[...]
> The key point is that UNIX was inexpensive and worked on modest hardware.
> Yes C came with it and that is why I think we use it not BLISS, BCPL, or
> some flavor of PLx today.

I hope C would have been invented even without Unix.

-- 
Regards,
Tomasz Rola

--
** A C programmer asked whether computer had Buddha's nature.      **
** As the answer, master did "rm -rif" on the programmer's home    **
** directory. And then the C programmer became enlightened...      **
**                                                                 **
** Tomasz Rola          mailto:tomasz_rola at bigfoot.com             **