Following Tony's lecture tonight: Were Thompson & Richie really slow on the keyboard? Sid.
Welcome to anyone finding the list as a result of tonights lecture. Remember, I'm presenting about applications tomorrow night, and if anyone out there is new to Linux and wants a quick overview (which isn't entirely dependent on you being a CS student!) on what's available then they should feel free to come along - there will be some seats spare and you can probably sneak in! Perfect for people who have never seen Linux, or just not recently. See http://www.wlug.org.nz/UnixTutorials.
Following Tony's lecture tonight:
Were Thompson & Richie really slow on the keyboard?
An equally valid reason on old machines was commands take up space, in memory as part of the interpreter, or on the storage. Both of which were scarce on the machines UNIX was written for. Writing 'ls' instead of list saves you two bytes. 'passwd' exhibits the six-character limit, which you might see in a few more places if you look hard. Craig
On Tue, 09 Mar 2004 9:11 pm, sns(a)paradise.net.nz wrote:
Following Tony's lecture tonight:
Were Thompson & Richie really slow on the keyboard?
Indeed. Ken Iverson was slower still. BTW: Some programmers never type at all. Donald Knuth wrote TEX sitting on his back porch poking holes in paper tape with a bent nail. It took him *hours* to get it finished working like that. -- Glyn Webster
Quoting Glyn Webster <glyn(a)wave.co.nz>:
On Tue, 09 Mar 2004 9:11 pm, sns(a)paradise.net.nz wrote:
... Were Thompson & Richie really slow on the keyboard?
Indeed. Ken Iverson was slower still.
Perhaps he still is, witness "J"
BTW: Some programmers never type at all. Donald Knuth wrote TEX sitting on his back porch poking holes in paper tape with a bent nail. It took him *hours* to get it finished working like that.
Does that produce fewer bugs? Wonder how many HOCS* that was. * Holes of Code
participants (3)
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Craig Box -
Glyn Webster -
sns＠paradise.net.nz