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Blit: a multitasking, windowed Unix GUI from 1982

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11–20 of 79 posts

Re: Blit: a multitasking, windowed Unix GUI from 1982

#11

I could work on this system. Give me a couple of terminals with vim, and a webbrowser in a different layer (of course that system precedes the web) and I could do 90% of what I'm doing today to get work done.

I am the same. I often consider setting up a UNIX system similar to this, without the web browser, to increase my productivity.

Re: Blit: a multitasking, windowed Unix GUI from 1982

#12
"Unix compilers are slow. So to entertain myself while I'm waiting, I can play asteroids! You see? Compiler errors print out even while asteroids is running!" (2:05)

This was pretty revolutionary at the time, but for some reason those lines made me crack up. Also:

"Is graphics good for anything other than playing games?" (2:19)

The question sounded sort of facetious then as it does now, but for different reasons.

Re: Blit: a multitasking, windowed Unix GUI from 1982

#14

I could work on this system. Give me a couple of terminals with vim, and a webbrowser in a different layer (of course that system precedes the web) and I could do 90% of what I'm doing today to get work done.

I am the same. I often consider setting up a UNIX system similar to this, without the web browser, to increase my productivity.

I find the webbrowser necessary for documentation (especially crowd sourced like StackOverflow)

Re: Blit: a multitasking, windowed Unix GUI from 1982

#15

"Unix compilers are slow. So to entertain myself while I'm waiting, I can play asteroids! You see? Compiler errors print out even while asteroids is running!" (2:05) This was pretty revolutionary at the time, but for some reason those lines made me crack up. Also: "Is graphics good for anything other than playing games?" (2:19) The question sounded sort of facetious then as it does now, but for different reasons.

I love that line about playing asteroids.

I was also entertained by the line towards the end of video: "I've always been able to think about multiple things at once but the terminal held me back."

It seems like we all very much doubt that was ever true now.

Re: Blit: a multitasking, windowed Unix GUI from 1982

#18

I dig the terminology they use. Layer is a great term. Also loved the distinct lack of chrome around layers. The invisible interface is still the future.

I dunno, affordances are pretty nifty. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affordance) It's a tradeoff of clutter vs. learning curve. And I have to imagine the future will, as always, be a tradeoff between the two.

Re: Blit: a multitasking, windowed Unix GUI from 1982

#20

Ah, the AT&T 3B2. I learned heavy-duty assembly language programming on the WE32000, that was a really nice processor. Shame it never took off in the era of 80286 and 68000...

Perhaps time has fogged your memory :-) That was a horrible processor. :-)
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