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AT&T Archives: The Unix Operating System

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Re: AT&T Archives: The Unix Operating System

#4

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

ineedtosleep wrote: post #3

I don't know why it just happened now, but it finally dawned on me after seeing the video's kernel/shell/utilities graphic: the shell is a wrapper around the kernel.

Well... the shell is a layer above the syscall functions which are a layer above the kernel :)

Re: AT&T Archives: The Unix Operating System

#5

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

RIP Dennis Ritchie. We all owe a great debt to you.

Heck, here I sit typing this in Firefox, written in C++, a derivative of C, on OS X, a derivative of the UNIX system. I have a Terminal open with which I am compiling PHP, written in C. His works are still relevant to today's world beyond the grave.

Re: AT&T Archives: The Unix Operating System

#6

Post by umeshunni »

The phrase "standing on the shoulders of giants" comes to mind when watching the video.

I wonder if Ken Thompson, Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie even imagined at the time that their creation will still be carried in the pockets of over a billion people 30 years later.

Re: AT&T Archives: The Unix Operating System

#7

Post by noobermin »

subdane wrote: post #2

I find this far more compelling for anthropological reasons than technical ones.

I think it was shared for its historical interest. While the gist of unix presented here is the same as the unix we know today, obviously many things have changed since the 1980s.

Re: AT&T Archives: The Unix Operating System

#8

Post by NAFV_P »

umeshunni wrote: post #6

The phrase "standing on the shoulders of giants" comes to mind when watching the video. I wonder if Ken Thompson, Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie even imagined at the time that their creation will still be carried in the pockets of over a billion people 30 years later.

> The phrase "standing on the shoulders of giants" comes to mind when watching the video.

Isaac Newton used the same phrase, but it was suspected he was referring to the short stature of his contemporary Robert Hooke.

Ritchie seemed down to earth, unassuming and hard working. That is why I am fond of him.

Re: AT&T Archives: The Unix Operating System

#9

Post by NAFV_P »

Looking at the wikipedia article on Ritchie, I found this photo of attendees of the 1984 Usenix Conference [0].

At the bottom of the page it points out some faces. There is a tall guy to Dennis' right, named as Erik Fair (not familiar with him, I'll admit) but he looks a lot like Larry Wall.

The only other face I recognised was Peter Langston, it demonstrates how little is known by the general public (including myself) about the contributions of all these people to CS.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Usenix84_1.jpg

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