[TUHS] Hypothetical: Could MULTICS have been written in C, if available?

[Larry McVoy via TUHS]

On Tue, May 26, 2026 at 03:41:47AM +0000, Brian Stuart wrote:
> On Tue, May 26, 2026 at 1:52???AM Larry McVoy via TUHS <tuhs at tuhs.org> wrote:
> > I have a son who is more about theory, he's a math guy.  I nudged him
> > towards programming, he of course went to python.  I nudged him towards
> > C and he came back with the best statement ever that I have gotten from
> > him: In C, you can feel the machine.  Yes, Travis, yes you can.  That's
> > part of what makes C great.
> 
> As it should be.  It's just as why I always prefer to drive a sports car to
> a luxury car, why when I did photography, I used my eyes and hands in the
> darkroom, and why when I play a musical instrument, I play the instrument
> instead of an abstraction that prevents me from making mistakes.  If I can't
> feel the connection to the car, its designer, and the road, driving stops being
> fun.  If I can't feel the connection to the instrument, I'm fighting against it,
> rather than it pulling the music out of me.  If I can't feel the connection
> between the language and the transistors, programming stops being fun
> and becomes a chore, and life is too short to write code that's not fun.
> 
> As retirement approaches, the chance to withdraw into my own hardware
> and my own languages is irresistable.
> 
> BLS
> 
> P.S. Kids, get off my lawn!  And you'll only get my PDP-11 when you pry
> it from my cold, dead hands!

Amen to all of this.  And I think I've posted this but it is worth a repeat
since you mentioned sports cars.

When Travis was looking at C, I told him that C is like driving a sports
car on a narrow, twisty road with no guard rails and a there is a cliff 
on one side of the road.  So it is not for people who want to look at their
phone while driving, that's how you die.  On the other hand, if you are a
good driver, that narrow, twisty road and that car are glorious.

Languages like Rust are all the rage, but they take away a lot of the joy
of making stuff work well in C.  I get it, there are far more programmers
that want to look at their phone than there are programmers who are good
enough to program in C.
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Larry McVoy           Retired to fishing          http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat