Stephen Bourne: Early days of Unix and design of sh [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: Stephen Bourne: Early days of Unix and design of sh [video]

#21

Post by asveikau » Sat, Jul 04, 2015, 9:18 AM UTC

I find it pretty amazing what a tight time some of these influential and lasting designs were implemented in. Bourne joins in 1975 and by the time he gets to 1977 in the talk there is already so much industry practice solidified.

How many years have some of us written shell scripts and make files, and here he is talking about sh and make popping up within 2 years in the 1970s...

Re: Stephen Bourne: Early days of Unix and design of sh [video]

#22

Post by ableal » Sat, Jul 04, 2015, 9:39 AM UTC

agumonkey wrote: post #7

btw, pdf slides here (first 'slide' link, not the last one): http://www.bsdcan.org/2015/schedule/events/612.en.html ( https://archive.is/gforA ) ps: Going back even further (multics), Louis Pouzin part in the idea of a shell http://www.multicians.org/shell.html ( https://archive.is/zVtQ8 )

Damn interesting, that second link on the Multics shell. Thanks for both.

Re: Stephen Bourne: Early days of Unix and design of sh [video]

#23

Post by bananaboy » Sat, Jul 04, 2015, 11:59 AM UTC

He sounds like Arthur C Clarke!

Re: Stephen Bourne: Early days of Unix and design of sh [video]

#24

Post by agumonkey » Sat, Jul 04, 2015, 1:08 PM UTC

ableal wrote: post #22

agumonkey wrote: post #7

btw, pdf slides here (first 'slide' link, not the last one): http://www.bsdcan.org/2015/schedule/events/612.en.html ( https://archive.is/gforA ) ps: Going back even further (multics), Louis Pouzin part in the idea of a shell http://www.multicians.org/shell.html ( https://archive.is/zVtQ8 )

Damn interesting, that second link on the Multics shell. Thanks for both.

You're welcome. And just in case you didn't know Louis Pouzin, he also invented the datagram https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Pouzin, a funny fellow :)

Re: Stephen Bourne: Early days of Unix and design of sh [video]

#25

Post by emmelaich » Sat, Jul 04, 2015, 2:23 PM UTC

paublyrne wrote: post #13

isbadawi wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In bash at least, cd with no arguments takes you back to the home directory.

You just saved me about ten seconds a day.

More precisely, it takes you $HOME.

Which is the same place. But you could make it different.

Re: Stephen Bourne: Early days of Unix and design of sh [video]

#26

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Jul 04, 2015, 2:36 PM UTC

paublyrne wrote: post #13

isbadawi wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In bash at least, cd with no arguments takes you back to the home directory.

You just saved me about ten seconds a day.

[deleted]

Re: Stephen Bourne: Early days of Unix and design of sh [video]

#27

Post by chmaynard » Mon, Jul 06, 2015, 6:45 PM UTC

I was eager to watch this video but I found it disappointing. The presentation was disorganized and unfocused, although Bourne did have some interesting war stories about Bell Labs. A specialist in writing shells might enjoy this talk, but there wasn't much value for a generalist like me.