|
|
Home | Switchboard | Unix Administration | Red Hat | TCP/IP Networks | Neoliberalism | Toxic Managers |
| (slightly skeptical) Educational society promoting "Back to basics" movement against IT overcomplexity and bastardization of classic Unix | |||||||
Newsgroups: uga.general
Path: athena.cs.uga.edu!greg
From: [email protected] (Greg Whitlock)
Subject: Unix and C is a hoax!
Message-ID: [[email protected]]
Sender: [email protected] (Greg Whitlock)
Organization: University of Georgia, Athens
Distribution: uga
Date: Tue, 5 Nov 91 03:56:09 GMT
I don't know if this was ever posted to this newsgroup or not but I
think everyone should read this.
-----------------begin news article----------------------------------
VNS TECHNOLOGY WATCH: [Mike Taylor, VNS Correspondent]
===================== [Littleton, MA, USA ]
COMPUTERWORLD 1 April
CREATORS ADMIT UNIX, C HOAX
In an announcement that has stunned the computer industry, Ken Thompson,
Dennis Ritchie and Brian Kernighan admitted that the Unix operating
system and C programming language created by them is an elaborate April
Fools prank kept alive for over 20 years. Speaking at the recent
UnixWorld Software Development Forum, Thompson revealed the following:
"In 1969, AT&T had just terminated their work with the GE/Honeywell/AT&T
Multics project. Brian and I had just started working with an early
release of Pascal from Professor Nichlaus Wirth's ETH labs in
Switzerland and we were impressed with its elegant simplicity and
power. Dennis had just finished reading 'Bored of the Rings', a
hilarious National Lampoon parody of the great Tolkien 'Lord of the
Rings' trilogy. As a lark, we decided to do parodies of the Multics
environment and Pascal. Dennis and I were responsible for the operating
environment. We looked at Multics and designed the new system to be as
complex and cryptic as possible to maximize casual users' frustration
levels, calling it Unix as a parody of Multics, as well as other more
risque allusions. Then Dennis and Brian worked on a truly warped
version of Pascal, called 'A'. When we found others were actually
trying to create real programs with A, we quickly added additional
cryptic features and evolved into B, BCPL and finally C. We stopped
when we got a clean compile on the following syntax:
for(;P("\n"),R-;P("|"))for(e=C;e-;P("_"+(*u++/8)%2))P("| "+(*u/4)%2);
To think that modern programmers would try to use a language that
allowed such a statement was beyond our comprehension! We actually
thought of selling this to the Soviets to set their computer science
progress back 20 or more years. Imagine our surprise when AT&T and
other US corporations actually began trying to use Unix and C! It has
taken them 20 years to develop enough expertise to generate even
marginally useful applications using this 1960's technological parody,
but we are impressed with the tenacity (if not common sense) of the
general Unix and C programmer. In any event, Brian, Dennis and I have
been working exclusively in Pascal on the Apple Macintosh for the past
few years and feel really guilty about the chaos, confusion and truly
bad programming that have resulted from our silly prank so long ago."
Major Unix and C vendors and customers, including AT&T, Microsoft,
Hewlett-Packard, GTE, NCR, and DEC have refused comment at this time.
Borland International, a leading vendor of Pascal and C tools,
including the popular Turbo Pascal, Turbo C and Turbo C++, stated they
had suspected this for a number of years and would continue to enhance
their Pascal products and halt further efforts to develop C. An IBM
spokesman broke into uncontrolled laughter and had to postpone a
hastily convened news conference concerning the fate of the RS-6000,
merely stating 'VM will be available Real Soon Now'. In a cryptic
statement, Professor Wirth of the ETH institute and father of the
Pascal, Modula 2 and Oberon structured languages, merely stated that P.
T. Barnum was correct.
In a related late-breaking story, usually reliable sources are stating
that a similar confession may be forthcoming from William Gates
concerning the MS-DOS and Windows operating environments. And IBM
spokesman have begun denying that the Virtual Machine (VM) product is
an internal prank gone awry.
{COMPUTERWORLD 1 April}
{contributed by Bernard L. Hayes}
[][][][][][][][] VNS Edition : 2336 Tuesday 4-Jun-1991 [][][][][][][][]
----
Johann Gambolputty de von Ausfernschpledenschlittscrascrenbonfriedigger-
dingledangledonglebursteinvonknackerthrasherapplebangerhorowitzicolensic-
granderknottyspelltinklegrandlickgrumbelmeyerspellerwasserkurstlickhim-
bleeisenbahnwagengutenabenabendbitteeinnurnburgebratwurstegerspurtenmitz-
weimacheluberhundsfutgumberaberschonendankerkalbsfleischmittleraucher Von
Hauptkopt of Ulm. a.k.a [email protected] /USA/GA/UGA/CS/ACM/POed
Society
Groupthink : Two Party System as Polyarchy : Corruption of Regulators : Bureaucracies : Understanding Micromanagers and Control Freaks : Toxic Managers : Harvard Mafia : Diplomatic Communication : Surviving a Bad Performance Review : Insufficient Retirement Funds as Immanent Problem of Neoliberal Regime : PseudoScience : Who Rules America : Neoliberalism : The Iron Law of Oligarchy : Libertarian Philosophy
Quotes
War and Peace : Skeptical Finance : John Kenneth Galbraith :Talleyrand : Oscar Wilde : Otto Von Bismarck : Keynes : George Carlin : Skeptics : Propaganda : SE quotes : Language Design and Programming Quotes : Random IT-related quotes : Somerset Maugham : Marcus Aurelius : Kurt Vonnegut : Eric Hoffer : Winston Churchill : Napoleon Bonaparte : Ambrose Bierce : Bernard Shaw : Mark Twain Quotes
Bulletin:
Vol 25, No.12 (December, 2013) Rational Fools vs. Efficient Crooks The efficient markets hypothesis : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2013 : Unemployment Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 23, No.10 (October, 2011) An observation about corporate security departments : Slightly Skeptical Euromaydan Chronicles, June 2014 : Greenspan legacy bulletin, 2008 : Vol 25, No.10 (October, 2013) Cryptolocker Trojan (Win32/Crilock.A) : Vol 25, No.08 (August, 2013) Cloud providers as intelligence collection hubs : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : Inequality Bulletin, 2009 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Copyleft Problems Bulletin, 2004 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Energy Bulletin, 2010 : Malware Protection Bulletin, 2010 : Vol 26, No.1 (January, 2013) Object-Oriented Cult : Political Skeptic Bulletin, 2011 : Vol 23, No.11 (November, 2011) Softpanorama classification of sysadmin horror stories : Vol 25, No.05 (May, 2013) Corporate bullshit as a communication method : Vol 25, No.06 (June, 2013) A Note on the Relationship of Brooks Law and Conway Law
History:
Fifty glorious years (1950-2000): the triumph of the US computer engineering : Donald Knuth : TAoCP and its Influence of Computer Science : Richard Stallman : Linus Torvalds : Larry Wall : John K. Ousterhout : CTSS : Multix OS Unix History : Unix shell history : VI editor : History of pipes concept : Solaris : MS DOS : Programming Languages History : PL/1 : Simula 67 : C : History of GCC development : Scripting Languages : Perl history : OS History : Mail : DNS : SSH : CPU Instruction Sets : SPARC systems 1987-2006 : Norton Commander : Norton Utilities : Norton Ghost : Frontpage history : Malware Defense History : GNU Screen : OSS early history
Classic books:
The Peter Principle : Parkinson Law : 1984 : The Mythical Man-Month : How to Solve It by George Polya : The Art of Computer Programming : The Elements of Programming Style : The Unix Hater’s Handbook : The Jargon file : The True Believer : Programming Pearls : The Good Soldier Svejk : The Power Elite
Most popular humor pages:
Manifest of the Softpanorama IT Slacker Society : Ten Commandments of the IT Slackers Society : Computer Humor Collection : BSD Logo Story : The Cuckoo's Egg : IT Slang : C++ Humor : ARE YOU A BBS ADDICT? : The Perl Purity Test : Object oriented programmers of all nations : Financial Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2008 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2010 : The Most Comprehensive Collection of Editor-related Humor : Programming Language Humor : Goldman Sachs related humor : Greenspan humor : C Humor : Scripting Humor : Real Programmers Humor : Web Humor : GPL-related Humor : OFM Humor : Politically Incorrect Humor : IDS Humor : "Linux Sucks" Humor : Russian Musical Humor : Best Russian Programmer Humor : Microsoft plans to buy Catholic Church : Richard Stallman Related Humor : Admin Humor : Perl-related Humor : Linus Torvalds Related humor : PseudoScience Related Humor : Networking Humor : Shell Humor : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2011 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2012 : Financial Humor Bulletin, 2013 : Java Humor : Software Engineering Humor : Sun Solaris Related Humor : Education Humor : IBM Humor : Assembler-related Humor : VIM Humor : Computer Viruses Humor : Bright tomorrow is rescheduled to a day after tomorrow : Classic Computer Humor
The Last but not Least Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand ~Archibald Putt. Ph.D
Copyright © 1996-2021 by Softpanorama Society. www.softpanorama.org was initially created as a service to the (now defunct) UN Sustainable Development Networking Programme (SDNP) without any remuneration. This document is an industrial compilation designed and created exclusively for educational use and is distributed under the Softpanorama Content License. Original materials copyright belong to respective owners. Quotes are made for educational purposes only in compliance with the fair use doctrine.
FAIR USE NOTICE This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available to advance understanding of computer science, IT technology, economic, scientific, and social issues. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided by section 107 of the US Copyright Law according to which such material can be distributed without profit exclusively for research and educational purposes.
This is a Spartan WHYFF (We Help You For Free) site written by people for whom English is not a native language. Grammar and spelling errors should be expected. The site contain some broken links as it develops like a living tree...
|
|
You can use PayPal to to buy a cup of coffee for authors of this site |
Disclaimer:
The statements, views and opinions presented on this web page are those of the author (or referenced source) and are not endorsed by, nor do they necessarily reflect, the opinions of the Softpanorama society. We do not warrant the correctness of the information provided or its fitness for any purpose. The site uses AdSense so you need to be aware of Google privacy policy. You you do not want to be tracked by Google please disable Javascript for this site. This site is perfectly usable without Javascript.
Last modified: March 12, 2019
