[TUHS] Coastal cultures, collaboration, creativity and Sun vs DEC.

[John Floren]

On Tuesday, January 11th, 2022 at 10:36 AM, Dan Cross <crossd at gmail.com> wrote:

> The question is, to what extent did differences in coastal cultures influence things like design aesthetics? I think it's is accurate to characterize early BTL Unix by it's minimalism, and others have echoed this (cf. Richard Gabriel in the "Worse is Better" papers). But similarly, BSD has always felt like a larger system -- didn't Lions go as far as to quip about the succinctness of 6th Edition being "fixed" by 4BSD?

I've usually attributed BSD's larger size to the enthusiasm of students who delight in adding nifty little toys and tools and options. Although "the Unix Philosophy" gets invoked in hushed tones today, there was presumably fewer fingers being wagged at the Berkeley kids for daring to experiment (except when they filled up the disk).

john