[TUHS] End of an era: the last ATC (USENIX Annual Technical Conference)

[Noel Hunt]

Seventh Edition Unix came with a program 'learn', written by
Brian Kernighan, which was a front-end to a group of tutorials
on 'ed', 'tbl', 'troff' etc.

The 'ed' tutorial was a wonderful introduction to the editor,
and a model of clarity, as indeed they all were, but that was
typical of everything written by researchers who were at 1127.

On Wed, 16 Jul 2025 at 22:53, Brantley Coile <brantley at coraid.com> wrote:

> Behind the glass wall in the basement of the University of Georgia
> graduate studies building, was the wide floor of the computer center and
> behind that was the office of one of my mentors, Bob Stearms. As he typed
> PL/1 into his 3278 terminal--channel connected no less--I spied a plain
> white book sitting on a shelf in his book case with an orange title
> "SOFTWARE TOOLS." I picked it up and flipped through it. It was 1980, the
> first year of my marriage.
>
> "What's this?", I asked as I pick up the volume and started flipping
> through it.
>
> "It's from the Unix guys. They wrote a pre-processor for FORTRAN and
> called it Ratfor. Then they wrote a bunch of the Unix programs in it."
>
> "Can I borrow it?"
>
> "Sure."
>
> I changed my life. I still use what I learned from it forty-five years
> later. And still very happily married to the bride of my youth.
>
> After Bob passed away, Frieda gave me that volume. It's one of my prized
> possessions.
>
> Forget Unix and C. The biggest research achievement to come out of 1127
> was a clear understanding of how to program.
>
> Brantley
>
> > On Jul 16, 2025, at 8:09 AM, arnold at skeeve.com wrote:
> >
> > IMHO, the best tutorials on ed are the chapters in "Software Tools"
> > and "Software Tools in Pascal" where Kernighan and Plauger write
> > a basic version of it.  I recommend both books highly, despite
> > their age.
> >
> > "Software Tools" literally changed my life. :-)
> >
> > Arnold
> >
> > Cameron Míċeál Tyre via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
> >
> >> Ah, rabbit holes. Dangerous things. I went down the ed rabbit hole
> around
> >> a month ago and no sign of me finding my way back out any time soon.
> >>
> >> I got obsessed with getting ed running on every device I have including
> my
> >> phones and then the big rabbit hole off that first one was learning how
> to
> >> use it properly and to the fullest of its abilities. That'll take a
> while.
> >>
> >> My library of ed related publications is getting so big its likely
> >> what's blocking the exit to the rabbit hole. On the plus side it has
> >> sharpened my typing skills, improved my patience and I I've learned to
> >> work out for myself what I've done to cause ed to say ?, instead of just
> >> typing h+Enter.
> >>
> >> As rabbit holes go, it's been stimulating so far and I could be stuck
> >> in worse places.
> >>
> >> Have a safe one!
> >>
> >> Cameron
> >>
> >>
> >> -------- Original Message --------
> >> On 16/07/2025 01:01, Luther Johnson <luther.johnson at makerlisp.com>
> wrote:
> >>
> >>> I just noticed that algorithm and logarithm just have a couple of
> >>> letters transposed from each other. So that's the kind of rabbit hole I
> >>> get lost in most days.
> >>>
> >>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://www.tuhs.org/pipermail/tuhs/attachments/20250717/6865520a/attachment-0001.htm>