[Sluglug] 10 reasons I hate U(nix)

[Peter Belew]

Hi ...

On 11/12/05, cerise at armory.com <cerise at armory.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 11, 2005 at 10:47:15PM -0800, Peter Belew wrote:
> > The first Unix versions were run on the PDP-7, which has a quite
> > different architecture from the later PDP-11 - 18-bit words,
> > no byte addressing (in fact, Digital hadn't started to use the word
> > 'byte' yet - an IBM coinage somewhat disparaged by the
> > anti-IBM users of DEC machines of the day - note that
> > networking folks dating back to that time tend to say 'octet'
> > rather than 'byte').
>
>    It's my experience that the current crop of networking folk still
> have that term -- they don't talk about IPv4 addresses as 4 bytes long.

 That's true, and my theory (to be confirmed by more input other
than my own memories of the '60s and '70s) is that the practice
originated before 'byte' became common in the non-IBM world.
>
> > (Another aside, further afield - speaking of the 36-bit big-endian
> > IBM machines like the 704 - their instruction set and registers
> > inspired the CAR and CDR keywords of LISP, first implemented
> > by John McCarthy on a 704 - 'Contents of Address Register'
> > and 'Contents of Decrement Register'.)
>
>    It should be noted that in Scheme, Steele and Sussman paid homage by
> using car and cdr.  However cadr, cddr, cdar, and other constructions
> matching the regex 'c[ad][ad]*r' were not influenced by hardware.

 Yes, although this choice is likely based on expanding the
CAR and CDR names as you describe - and those 2 keywords
are documented as originating from the 704 register names.

Hmmm ... one wonders how the IE root from which we get 'slug'
and 'slime' and 'slippery' (and the Latin 'limax' = slug) originated?
And then there are false derivations, false cognates - 'linux' sounds
a lot like 'limax' - maybe they have a common origin? ... but no,
we know 'linux' is inspired by 'Linus' + 'unix'.... ... but this list
could appropriately be called the 'limax-linux' group.

   http://www.armory.com/~peterbe/maxlimax.html

>
> -Phil/CERisE
> _______________________________________________
> Sluglug mailing list
> Sluglug at sluglug.ucsc.edu
> http://sluglug.ucsc.edu/mailman/listinfo/sluglug
>