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Celebrating 45 Years of Kermit with the First New C-Kermit Release in 15 Years

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Re: Celebrating 45 Years of Kermit with the First New C-Kermit Release in 15 Years

#41

Post by rob74 »

caycep wrote: post #30

"1981 was a different time for computing. It was expensive (both hardware and software)" doesn't sound so different anymore...the VCs have managed to go back to the future...

Even though the price of RAM has gone up recently, it's still (even if you don't adjust for inflation) several orders of magnitude cheaper than it was in 1981...

This graph (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/historical-cost-of-comput...) doesn't contain the latest uptick, but just to get the picture:

1981: 1 TB of memory cost 12.8 billion $ (at least theoretically - I'm not sure if worldwide RAM production for that year was more than 1 TB?)

2023: 1 TB of memory cost 1088 $

Re: Celebrating 45 Years of Kermit with the First New C-Kermit Release in 15 Years

#42

Post by burnt-resistor »

jonathaneunice wrote: post #27

I complied Kermit for IBM's AIX in ~1989 as a study in "how compatible is AIX to other Unixes?" Kermit source code remains the high-water mark in my memory for how many different, incompatible, non-standard platforms one piece of software can support. More than even Unix itself, as it could also run on VMS and non-Unixes of the time. I have never in my life seen so many `#ifdef`s and such complicated "Am I running on…

That was one ethos that was taught at the UC Davis CS program in the 90's-00's. They had clusters of IRIX, Linux, Sun, HP-UX, and (sometimes) MINIX boxes. Homework and lab projects would be nondeterministically graded on any except MINIX. It was also beneficial to add portability for Windows with MS and/or Borland toolchains for some projects. BSD sockets was pretty cross-platform with some idiosyncratic gotchas per platform.

It saddens me whenever someone or a group religiously tie their opinions or assumptions to a particular platform and irrationally scoff at others or refuse to consider that other things exist, are used, and function.

Re: Celebrating 45 Years of Kermit with the First New C-Kermit Release in 15 Years

#43

Post by pjmlp »

burnt-resistor wrote: post #42
jonathaneunice wrote: post #27

I complied Kermit for IBM's AIX in ~1989 as a study in "how compatible is AIX to other Unixes?" Kermit source code remains the high-water mark in my memory for how many different, incompatible, non-standard platforms one piece of software can support. More than even Unix itself, as it could also run on VMS and non-Unixes of the time. I have never in my life seen so many `#ifdef`s and such complicated "Am I running on…

That was one ethos that was taught at the UC Davis CS program in the 90's-00's. They had clusters of IRIX, Linux, Sun, HP-UX, and (sometimes) MINIX boxes. Homework and lab projects would be nondeterministically graded on any except MINIX. It was also beneficial to add portability for Windows with MS and/or Borland toolchains for some projects. BSD sockets was pretty cross-platform with some idiosyncratic gotchas per…

Agreed, specially those that talk about Linux distros when they actually mean UNIX/POSIX.

Re: Celebrating 45 Years of Kermit with the First New C-Kermit Release in 15 Years

#45

Post by bombcar »

wbl wrote: post #34
Neywiny wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is interesting because most autoconf programs I've seen do the opposite. They have all these defines and then don't use them. Just seems like a waste of time. Cmake has been better but still sometimes cmake will pass and the code still doesn't build

Autotools on little endian Linux is the biggest waste of CPU time imaginable.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while

I compiled, weak and weary,

Over many a quaint and curious

emerge of GNU more—

While I nodded, nearly napping,

suddenly there came a tapping,

As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.

“’Tis just automake,” I muttered, “gently checking CPU floor—

Only this, and nothing more.”

“Automake!” said I, “thing of evil!—automake still, if GNU or devil!—

Whether Linus sent, or whether Stallman tossed thee here ashore,

Desolate yet all undaunted, on this desert land enchanted—

On this home by horror haunted—tell me truly, I implore—

Is there—is there caching in Gentoo?—tell me—tell me, I implore!”

Quoth automake, “Nevermore.”

It would be nice if automake remembered your system in a cache.

Re: Celebrating 45 Years of Kermit with the First New C-Kermit Release in 15 Years

#47

Post by mycall »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #18

I remember mostly ignoring Kermit back in my BBSing days; by the time "SuperKermit" came along, which could get performance competitive with ZMODEM, it alreayd seemed ancient. Then, around 1991, a friend gave me access to his college Unix account so I could play with Gopher, Archie, and TinyFugue (the world of MUDs/MUCKs/etc.). The catch: to get to his account from my home machine, I had to call into a Florida state…

Trumpet Winsock in PPP mode, or SLIP ATTACH or invoking a SLIP server daemon upon login, worked with UCF/UF library VAX systems back then. Just needed to use CTRL-C to break out of their login scripts and get a prompt.

Re: Celebrating 45 Years of Kermit with the First New C-Kermit Release in 15 Years

#48

Post by mikaraento »

burnt-resistor wrote: post #42
jonathaneunice wrote: post #27

I complied Kermit for IBM's AIX in ~1989 as a study in "how compatible is AIX to other Unixes?" Kermit source code remains the high-water mark in my memory for how many different, incompatible, non-standard platforms one piece of software can support. More than even Unix itself, as it could also run on VMS and non-Unixes of the time. I have never in my life seen so many `#ifdef`s and such complicated "Am I running on…

That was one ethos that was taught at the UC Davis CS program in the 90's-00's. They had clusters of IRIX, Linux, Sun, HP-UX, and (sometimes) MINIX boxes. Homework and lab projects would be nondeterministically graded on any except MINIX. It was also beneficial to add portability for Windows with MS and/or Borland toolchains for some projects. BSD sockets was pretty cross-platform with some idiosyncratic gotchas per…

Today’s version would be to grade shell script homework randomly on either Linux or macOS :)

Re: Celebrating 45 Years of Kermit with the First New C-Kermit Release in 15 Years

#49

Post by nickdothutton »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #18

I remember mostly ignoring Kermit back in my BBSing days; by the time "SuperKermit" came along, which could get performance competitive with ZMODEM, it alreayd seemed ancient. Then, around 1991, a friend gave me access to his college Unix account so I could play with Gopher, Archie, and TinyFugue (the world of MUDs/MUCKs/etc.). The catch: to get to his account from my home machine, I had to call into a Florida state…

I found it essential for the same reasons, in those early Internet days... PAD, -> UNIX host (x.25), -> VMS "mainframe" (dual stack), on to Internet (TCP/IP).

Re: Celebrating 45 Years of Kermit with the First New C-Kermit Release in 15 Years

#50

Post by jandrese »

devilbunny wrote: post #37
jandrese wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I remember. Kermit hated latency, and dial up modems had that in spades. It was much slower than Z-Modem for pushing files around.

It did fine iff you had a good Kermit implementation at the BBS. Most used the most basic possible version of the protocol, which was godawfully slow, but I did some dialup at the end of the BBS era (93-95) where someone showed me how to use Kermit properly with large packets and sliding windows. It was every bit as fast as Zmodem, though I don’t recall if it supported transfer resuming. I never used the translation…

A good example of the defaults being incredibly important to any application. If your defaults are super slow then most people are going to come away with the impression that your application is slow.

FTP is another great example where people got the impression that it was prone to corrupting transfers because the default setting was to corrupt binary transfers.

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