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80 lines
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80 lines
4.5 KiB
Plaintext
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<><><><><><><><> T h e V O G O N N e w s S e r v i c e <><><><><><><><>
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Edition : 2336 Tuesday 4-Jun-1991 Circulation : 8466
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VNS TECHNOLOGY WATCH: [Mike Taylor, VNS Correspondent]
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===================== [Littleton, MA, USA ]
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COMPUTERWORLD 1 April
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CREATORS ADMIT UNIX, C HOAX
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In an announcement that has stunned the computer industry, Ken Thompson,
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Dennis Ritchie and Brian Kernighan admitted that the Unix operating
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system and C programming language created by them is an elaborate April
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Fools prank kept alive for over 20 years. Speaking at the recent
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UnixWorld Software Development Forum, Thompson revealed the following:
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"In 1969, AT&T had just terminated their work with the GE/Honeywell/AT&T
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Multics project. Brian and I had just started working with an early
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release of Pascal from Professor Nicklaus Wirth's ETH labs in
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Switzerland and we were impressed with its elegant simplicity and
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power. Dennis had just finished reading `Bored of the Rings', a
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hilarious National Lampoon parody of the great Tolkien `Lord of the
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Rings' trilogy. As a lark, we decided to do parodies of the Multics
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environment and Pascal. Dennis and I were responsible for the operating
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environment. We looked at Multics and designed the new system to be as
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complex and cryptic as possible to maximize casual users' frustration
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levels, calling it Unix as a parody of Multics, as well as other more
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risque allusions. Then Dennis and Brian worked on a truly warped
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version of Pascal, called `A'. When we found others were actually
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trying to create real programs with A, we quickly added additional
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cryptic features and evolved into B, BCPL and finally C. We stopped
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when we got a clean compile on the following syntax:
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for(;P("\n"),R-;P("|"))for(e=C;e-;P("_"+(*u++/8)%2))P("| "+(*u/4)%2);
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To think that modern programmers would try to use a language that
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allowed such a statement was beyond our comprehension! We actually
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thought of selling this to the Soviets to set their computer science
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progress back 20 or more years. Imagine our surprise when AT&T and
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other US corporations actually began trying to use Unix and C! It has
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taken them 20 years to develop enough expertise to generate even
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marginally useful applications using this 1960's technological parody,
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but we are impressed with the tenacity (if not common sense) of the
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general Unix and C programmer. In any event, Brian, Dennis and I have
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been working exclusively in Pascal on the Apple Macintosh for the past
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few years and feel really guilty about the chaos, confusion and truly
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bad programming that have resulted from our silly prank so long ago."
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Major Unix and C vendors and customers, including AT&T, Microsoft,
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Hewlett-Packard, GTE, NCR, and DEC have refused comment at this time.
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Borland International, a leading vendor of Pascal and C tools,
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including the popular Turbo Pascal, Turbo C and Turbo C++, stated they
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had suspected this for a number of years and would continue to enhance
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their Pascal products and halt further efforts to develop C. An IBM
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spokesman broke into uncontrolled laughter and had to postpone a
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hastily convened news conference concerning the fate of the RS-6000,
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merely stating `VM will be available Real Soon Now'. In a cryptic
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statement, Professor Wirth of the ETH institute and father of the
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Pascal, Modula 2 and Oberon structured languages, merely stated that P.
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T. Barnum was correct.
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In a related late-breaking story, usually reliable sources are stating
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that a similar confession may be forthcoming from William Gates
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concerning the MS-DOS and Windows operating environments. And IBM
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spokesman have begun denying that the Virtual Machine (VM) product is
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an internal prank gone awry.
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{COMPUTERWORLD 1 April}
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{contributed by Bernard L. Hayes}
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<><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
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Please send subscription and backissue requests to CASEE::VNS
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Permission to copy material from this VNS is granted (per DIGITAL PP&P)
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provided that the message header for the issue and credit lines for the
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VNS correspondent and original source are retained in the copy.
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<><><><><><><><> VNS Edition : 2336 Tuesday 4-Jun-1991 <><><><><><><><>
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