🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <64502@linus.UUCP> eachus@mbunix.mitre.org (Robert I. Eachus) writes:
[Screenfuls of completely missing the point omitted.]

Sure, I you, and everyone else in the civilized universe knows that there
_IS_ a complex structure of inodes, block accessing, and whatever hidden
down under the apparently simple interface to Unix files.  The point,
which escaped you to the point of near apoplexy, is that applications
programmers from the student beginner can completely ignore that complex
structure and treat the file as a stream of (randomly accessible) bytes.

All the blurb about Multix is also wide of the mark.  I was responding
to a series of articles all claiming in essence "Unix isn't so great,
look at this (long-after-Unix-developed) much nicer way to chose a
metaphor of device access"; and I attempted to provide a bit of historical
context to the discussion.  This does not require me to trace the concepts
back to Babbage, and frankly, except for being the predecessor that drove
the Unix developers away to do things better, Multics was a dinosaur, however
nice the ideas incorporated.  Don't believe me?  Check its market share
versus Unix or even the OS-360's children. ;-)

I even have my very own History of Programming Languages; I'm not at all
unaware of the history; in fact, in some small parts, I was a part of it.

>>Not too scruffy from a beginning of "keep it simple, stupid." ;-)
>
>     This is a real insult, however you are probably, based on the
>above comments, unaware of just how insulting it is.

a) That funny looking thing is a smily face.  Welcome to the net, BIFF!
It is exactly the ideas that make a complicated subject simple that
improve the world.  The Unix file as a stream of bytes paradigm made a
horrendously complicated process in every other file system much easier
to comprehend.  And no, that god-awful segmented mess that was Multics
idea of a file doesn't begin to compare.

b) The insult is in your own mind, not the text you read.  When you
take the time to read what is in front of you, perhaps your written
responses will contain a bit more light and less heat.

>The first computer I programmed was an IBM 650. I
>still have a copy of the first assembler manual at home (GP for the
>Univac I).  I played Spacewar on the PDP-1 and MIT in 1964.  I worked
>on debugging the first time sharing systems.  WHERE WERE YOU?

Looks like by the time you got started, youngster, I was already on
my fourth or fifth programming language.

>					Robert I. Eachus
>

Who has certainly had better days than that one!

>
>      If thare are people who want to reminisce about the old days,
>I'd love to, but lets keep it to e-mail.  I only posted this because I
>don't want young programmers kept in the dark.  Santayanna, got it
>right, and I remember seeing a column (in Datamation I think, eight or
>ten years ago when it was still worth reading) about visiting a
>microcomputer show in the Z80 days, and recognizing a lot of the old
>mistakes being repeated.

We have the same goals; wonder how come your approach fails to meet the
need?  Think, then type and you'll surely do better.

well!xanthian
Kent, the man from xanth, now just another echo from The Well.