DOCSLIB.ORG

CS 403: a Brief (And Pretty Incomplete) History of Programming Languages (S

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
CS 403: a Brief (And Pretty Incomplete) History of Programming Languages (S HISTORY OF PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES CS 403: A Brief (and Pretty Incomplete) History of “Prehistory” Programming Languages The 1940s: von Neumann and Zuse The 1950s: The first programming language The 1960s: An explosion in programming languages Stefan D. Bruda The 1970s: Simplicity, abstraction, study The 1980s: Consolidation and new directions The 1990s: The explosion of the World Wide Web Fall 2021 The 21st century CS 403: A Brief (and Pretty Incomplete) History of Programming Languages (S. D. Bruda) Fall 2021 1 / 21 PREHYSTORY WRITTEN LANGUAGE TO DESCRIBE COMPUTATIONAL PROCEDURES Cuneiform writing used in the Babylon, founded by Hammurabi around 1790 BC A cistern. poems, stories, contracts, records, astronomy, math The length equals the height. A certain volume of dirt has been excavated. The cross-sectional area plus this volume comes to 110. The length is 30. What is the width? Famous Babylonian math You should multiply the length, 30, by . tablet (Plimpton 322) — Translation by Donald Knuth involving Pythagorean triples, a2 + b2 = c2 – with No variables a mistake! (or bug) Instead, numbers serve as a running example of the procedure being described “This is the procedure” Weird math (base 60!) Programming is among the earliest uses to which written language was two characters to express a (base-60) digit put decimal point not specified (must be figured out from context) Programming languages design has tried to get as close to that as possible from the very beginning. CS 403: A Brief (and Pretty Incomplete) History of Programming Languages (S. D. Bruda) Fall 2021 2 / 21 CS 403: A Brief (and Pretty Incomplete) History of Programming Languages (S. D. Bruda) Fall 2021 3 / 21 ALGORITHMS THE FIRST PROGRAMMING ENVIRONMENTS Abu¯ ’Abdallah¯ Muh. ammad ibn Mus¯ a¯ al-Khwarizm¯ ¯ı, or Mohammed Al-Khorezmi for short (Baghdad, 780–850 BC) Jacquard loom (early 1800s) translated One little book: “The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and card patterns into cloth designs Balancing” Compilation and extension of known rules for solving quadratic equations and Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine other problems (1830s & 40s) Used as a mathematics text in Europe for eight hundred years First programmer: Augusta Ada King, The book is considered the foundation of algebra Countess of Lovelace (today commonly Invention of the notions of algorithms and data structures known as Ada Lovelace) Other early algorithms: The engine can arrange and combine its numerical quantities exactly as if they Euclid (300 BC): an algorithm for computing the GCD of two numbers were letters or any other general symbols; Eratosthenes (about same time): one of the most efficient algorithms for and in fact might bring out its results in al- finding small primes (the sieve of Eratosthenes) gebraic notation, were provision made. Alexander de Villa Dei (1220 AD): Canto de Algorismo = algorithms in Latin verse Programs were punched cards containing data and operations Natural language (even poetry!) plus math rather than programming languages CS 403: A Brief (and Pretty Incomplete) History of Programming Languages (S. D. Bruda) Fall 2021 4 / 21 CS 403: A Brief (and Pretty Incomplete) History of Programming Languages (S. D. Bruda) Fall 2021 5 / 21 THE 1940S: VON NEUMANN AND ZUSE THE FIRST COMPUTER BUG! Harvard Mark I (1943) – Howard Aiken (IBM), Grace Hopper (Navy) first electro-mechanical computer → Harvard Mark II: First computer bug ENIAC (1946) – Presper Eckert, John Mauchly (U. Penn.) First → electronic computer Programming was manual, with switches and cables John von Neumann led a team that built computers with stored programs and a central processor (as we know them today) Konrad Zuse designed the first programming language as we know it (Plankalkul = program calculus) In Germany, in isolation because of the war; work finally published in 1972 Advanced data type features: floating point, arrays, records Invariants for correctness Rather cumbersome notation 5 B A ∗ ⇒ A[7] := 5 B[6] V 6 7 (subscripts) × → S 1.n 1.n (data types) Never implemented CS 403: A Brief (and Pretty Incomplete) History of Programming Languages (S. D. Bruda) Fall 2021 6 / 21 CS 403: A Brief (and Pretty Incomplete) History of Programming Languages (S. D. Bruda) Fall 2021 7 / 21 THE 1950S:THE FIRST PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES FORTRAN EXAMPLE FORTRAN (1957, John Backus) IMPLICIT INTEGER (A-Z) FORmula TRANslator – designed for scientific programming DIMENSION ORD(N),POPLST(2,20) Many new features over time: FORTRAN II, FORTRAN IV, FORTRAN 66, INTEGER X,XX,Z,ZZ,Y FORTRAN 77 (structured programs, char’s), Fortran 90 (arrays, modules), INTEGER A(N) Fortran 2003 (objects), Fortran 2008 (concurrent programming) NDEEP=0 Very efficient compilation into fast machine code U1=N COBOL (1960, Grace Hopper) L1=1 mathematical programs should be written in mathematical notation, DO 1 I=1,N data processing programs should be written in English statements — 1 ORD(I)=I G. Hopper, 1953 2 IF (U1.LE.L1) RETURN 3 L=L1 Committee sponsored by US Department of Defence U=U1 Biggest contribution was the idea that programs should be written in a way 4 P=L that is easily understood Q=U Adopted widely by businesses for record-keeping applications Record structure, separation of data from execution part, versatile formatting X=A(ORD(P)) of output using “pictures” Z=A(ORD(Q)) ANSI standards (1968, 1974, 1985) IF (X.LE.Z) GO TO 5 .... 5 CS 403: A Brief (and Pretty Incomplete) History of Programming Languages (S. D. Bruda) Fall 2021 8 / 21 CS 403: A Brief (and Pretty Incomplete) History of Programming Languages (S. D. Bruda) Fall 2021 9 / 21 COBOL EXAMPLE THE 1950S:THE FIRST LANGUAGES (CONT’D) ENVIRONMENT DIVISION. CONFIGURATION SECTION. Algol 60 SOURCE-COMPUTER. IBM-4381. General, expressive language; most current imperatives are derivatives OBJECT-COMPUTER. IBM-4381. Introduced many modern concepts structured programming reserved keywords type declarations DATA DIVISION. recursion stack dynamic arrays call-by-value WORKING-STORAGE SECTION. user defined types free-format 01 INPUT-FIELD. Stack-based run time environment 05 INPUT-VALUE PIC 99 VALUE ZERO. Great success and also great failure (ahead of its time, too complex, lack of 01 CALCULATION-FIELD. I/O, lack of support from IBM) entrenchment of Fortran → 05 SUM-VALUE PIC 9(03) VALUE ZERO. LISP (John McCarthy, MIT) 05 AVERAGE-VALUE PIC 9(03)V99 VALUE ZERO. LISt Processing the main data structure is the (singly linked) list 01 OUTPUT-FIELD. → Untyped, messy language, but good for problems we solve by trial and error 05 EDIT-FIELD PIC ZZ9.99 VALUE ZERO. (quick prototyping) used in many AI applications → Historically inefficient on Von Neumann machines PROCEDURE DIVISION. Main processing unit: the recursive function influenced the modern 1000-MAIN. → functional languages such as ML, Miranda, Haskell PERFORM 2000-INPUT-ADD 10 TIMES. Contemporary variants include Common Lisp, Scheme, Emacs Lisp DIVIDE 10 INTO SUM-VALUE GIVING AVERAGE-VALUE. 2000-INPUT-ADD. ... CS 403: A Brief (and Pretty Incomplete) History of Programming Languages (S. D. Bruda) Fall 2021 10 / 21 CS 403: A Brief (and Pretty Incomplete) History of Programming Languages (S. D. Bruda) Fall 2021 11 / 21 ALGOL EXAMPLE LISP EXAMPLE procedure Absmax(a) Size:(n, m) Result:(y) Subscripts:(i, k); value n, m; (defun mapcar (fun list) array a; "Applies FUN on every element of LIST and returns the integer n, m, i, k; list of results (iterative version)." real y; (let ((results nil)) comment The absolute greatest element of the matrix a, of size (dolist (x list) n by m is transferred to y, and the subscripts of this element (setq results (cons (apply #’fun x) results))) to i and k; (reverse results))) begin integer p, q; y := 0; i := k := 1; (defun mapcar (fun list) for p:=1 step 1 until n do "Applies FUN on every element of LIST and returns the for q:=1 step 1 until m do list of results (recursive version)." if abs(a[p, q]) > y then (cons (apply #’fun (car list)) begin y := abs(a[p, q]); (mapcar fun (cdr list)))) i := p; k := q end end Absmax CS 403: A Brief (and Pretty Incomplete) History of Programming Languages (S. D. Bruda) Fall 2021 12 / 21 CS 403: A Brief (and Pretty Incomplete) History of Programming Languages (S. D. Bruda) Fall 2021 13 / 21 THE 1960S:AN EXPLOSION IN LANGUAGES THE 1970S:SIMPLICITY, ABSTRACTION, STUDY Hundreds of languages were developed Algol-W then Pascal (Nicklaus Wirth and C.A.R.Hoare) small, simple, → efficient (reaction against the 60s), ideal for teaching C (Dennis Ritchie) PL/1 (1964) Constructed as a portable assembler to build Unix for various architectures Combined features of FORTRAN, COBOL, Algol 60 and more! But also has modern features (structured programming, data structures, etc.) Translators were slow, huge, and unreliable The primary API for Unix (Mac OS, Linux, etc.) is still C! Some say it was ahead of its time. Euclid (University of Toronto, 1977) Algol 68 still ahead of its time! Main goal formal program verification → → Simula (or what would be called today Object-oriented Algol) extends Pascal to include abstract data types BASIC Scheme (1978, MIT) simplified, cleaner Lisp → etc. CS 403: A Brief (and Pretty Incomplete) History of Programming Languages (S. D. Bruda) Fall 2021 14 / 21 CS 403: A Brief (and Pretty Incomplete) History of Programming Languages (S. D. Bruda) Fall 2021 15 / 21 C EXAMPLE THE 1980S:CONSOLIDATION & NEW DIRECTIONS #include <stdio.h> main(t,_,a) char*a; {return!0<t?t<3? main(-79,-13,a+ main(-87,1-_, main(-86, 0, a+1 ) +a)): ML mostly functional language (like Lisp) with cleaner (math-like) 1, → t<_? syntax main(t+1, _, a ) :3, Prolog (Universite´ Aix Marseille) main ( -94, -27+t, a ) &&t == 2 ?_ PROgrammation en LOGique / PROgramming in LOGic describes the <13 ? → main ( 2, _+1, "%s %d %d\n" ) problem at hand as known facts and inference rules :9:16: t<0? Notable industrial uses: IBM Watson, Apache UIMA, and the.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Tortoisemerge a Diff/Merge Tool for Windows Version 1.11
    TortoiseMerge A diff/merge tool for Windows Version 1.11 Stefan Küng Lübbe Onken Simon Large TortoiseMerge: A diff/merge tool for Windows: Version 1.11 by Stefan Küng, Lübbe Onken, and Simon Large Publication date 2018/09/22 18:28:22 (r28377) Table of Contents Preface ........................................................................................................................................ vi 1. TortoiseMerge is free! ....................................................................................................... vi 2. Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................. vi 1. Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 1 1.1. Overview ....................................................................................................................... 1 1.2. TortoiseMerge's History .................................................................................................... 1 2. Basic Concepts .......................................................................................................................... 3 2.1. Viewing and Merging Differences ...................................................................................... 3 2.2. Editing Conflicts ............................................................................................................. 3 2.3. Applying Patches ...........................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Epmp Command Line Interface User Guide
    USER GUIDE ePMP Command Line Interface ePMP Command Line Interface User Manual Table of Contents 1 Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 3 1.1 Purpose ................................................................................................................................ 3 1.2 Command Line Access ........................................................................................................ 3 1.3 Command usage syntax ...................................................................................................... 3 1.4 Basic information ................................................................................................................. 3 1.4.1 Context sensitive help .......................................................................................................... 3 1.4.2 Auto-completion ................................................................................................................... 3 1.4.3 Movement keys .................................................................................................................... 3 1.4.4 Deletion keys ....................................................................................................................... 4 1.4.5 Escape sequences .............................................................................................................. 4 2 Command Line Interface Overview ..............................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Powerview Command Reference
    PowerView Command Reference TRACE32 Online Help TRACE32 Directory TRACE32 Index TRACE32 Documents ...................................................................................................................... PowerView User Interface ............................................................................................................ PowerView Command Reference .............................................................................................1 History ...................................................................................................................................... 12 ABORT ...................................................................................................................................... 13 ABORT Abort driver program 13 AREA ........................................................................................................................................ 14 AREA Message windows 14 AREA.CLEAR Clear area 15 AREA.CLOSE Close output file 15 AREA.Create Create or modify message area 16 AREA.Delete Delete message area 17 AREA.List Display a detailed list off all message areas 18 AREA.OPEN Open output file 20 AREA.PIPE Redirect area to stdout 21 AREA.RESet Reset areas 21 AREA.SAVE Save AREA window contents to file 21 AREA.Select Select area 22 AREA.STDERR Redirect area to stderr 23 AREA.STDOUT Redirect area to stdout 23 AREA.view Display message area in AREA window 24 AutoSTOre ..............................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • A Biased History Of! Programming Languages Programming Languages:! a Short History Fortran Cobol Algol Lisp
    A Biased History of! Programming Languages Programming Languages:! A Short History Fortran Cobol Algol Lisp Basic PL/I Pascal Scheme MacLisp InterLisp Franz C … Ada Common Lisp Roman Hand-Abacus. Image is from Museo (Nazionale Ramano at Piazzi delle Terme, Rome) History • Pre-History : The first programmers • Pre-History : The first programming languages • The 1940s: Von Neumann and Zuse • The 1950s: The First Programming Language • The 1960s: An Explosion in Programming languages • The 1970s: Simplicity, Abstraction, Study • The 1980s: Consolidation and New Directions • The 1990s: Internet and the Web • The 2000s: Constraint-Based Programming Ramon Lull (1274) Raymondus Lullus Ars Magna et Ultima Gottfried Wilhelm Freiherr ! von Leibniz (1666) The only way to rectify our reasonings is to make them as tangible as those of the Mathematician, so that we can find our error at a glance, and when there are disputes among persons, we can simply say: Let us calculate, without further ado, in order to see who is right. Charles Babbage • English mathematician • Inventor of mechanical computers: – Difference Engine, construction started but not completed (until a 1991 reconstruction) – Analytical Engine, never built I wish to God these calculations had been executed by steam! Charles Babbage, 1821 Difference Engine No.1 Woodcut of a small portion of Mr. Babbages Difference Engine No.1, built 1823-33. Construction was abandoned 1842. Difference Engine. Built to specifications 1991. It has 4,000 parts and weighs over 3 tons. Fixed two bugs. Portion of Analytical Engine (Arithmetic and Printing Units). Under construction in 1871 when Babbage died; completed by his son in 1906.
    [Show full text]
  • Visualization of Fine-Grained Code Change History
    2013 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing Visualization of Fine-Grained Code Change History YoungSeok Yoon Brad A. Myers, Sebon Koo Institute for Software Research Human-Computer Interaction Institute School of Computer Science School of Computer Science Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA [email protected] [email protected], [email protected] Abstract—Conventional version control systems save code inherent in VCSs [2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. The basic idea is to keep all changes at each check-in. Recently, some development environ- the small low-level changes such as individual insertion, dele- ments retain more fine-grain changes. However, providing tools tion, and replacement of text. Recently, this approach has been for developers to use those histories is not a trivial task, due to shown to be feasible [4, 5, 8], and there have been attempts to the difficulties in visualizing the history. We present two visuali- make use of these fine-grained histories in two different ways. zations of fine-grained code change history, which actively inter- act with the code editor: a timeline visualization, and a code his- The first way is to help developers understand the code tory diff view. Our timeline and filtering options allow developers evolution by recording and replaying fine-grained changes in to navigate through the history and easily focus on the infor- the integrated development environments (IDEs) [6, 9, 10]. mation they need. The code history diff view shows the history of One experiment showed that developers can answer software any particular code fragment, allowing developers to move evolution questions more quickly and correctly when provided through the history simply by dragging the marker back and with a replay tool.
    [Show full text]
  • A Brief Introduction to Unix-2019-AMS
    A Brief Introduction to Linux/Unix – AMS 2019 Pete Pokrandt UW-Madison AOS Systems Administrator [email protected] Twitter @PTH1 Brief Intro to Linux/Unix o Brief History of Unix o Basics of a Unix session o The Unix File System o Working with Files and Directories o Your Environment o Common Commands Brief Intro to Unix (contd) o Compilers, Email, Text processing o Image Processing o The vi editor History of Unix o Created in 1969 by Kenneth Thompson and Dennis Ritchie at AT&T o Revised in-house until first public release 1977 o 1977 – UC-Berkeley – Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) o 1983 – Sun Workstations produced a Unix Workstation o AT&T unix -> System V History of Unix o Today – two main variants, but blended o System V (Sun Solaris, SGI, Dec OSF1, AIX, linux) o BSD (Old SunOS, linux, Mac OSX/MacOS) History of Unix o It’s been around for a long time o It was written by computer programmers for computer programmers o Case sensitive, mostly lowercase abbreviations Basics of a Unix Login Session o The Shell – the command line interface, where you enter commands, etc n Some common shells Bourne Shell (sh) C Shell (csh) TC Shell (tcsh) Korn Shell (ksh) Bourne Again Shell (bash) [OSX terminal] Basics of a Unix Login Session o Features provided by the shell n Create an environment that meets your needs n Write shell scripts (batch files) n Define command aliases n Manipulate command history n Automatically complete the command line (tab) n Edit the command line (arrow keys in tcsh) Basics of a Unix Login Session o Logging in to a unix
    [Show full text]
  • A Brief History of Unix
    A Brief History of Unix Tom Ryder [email protected] https://sanctum.geek.nz/ I Love Unix ∴ I Love Linux ● When I started using Linux, I was impressed because of the ethics behind it. ● I loved the idea that an operating system could be both free to customise, and free of charge. – Being a cash-strapped student helped a lot, too. ● As my experience grew, I came to appreciate the design behind it. ● And the design is UNIX. ● Linux isn’t a perfect Unix, but it has all the really important bits. What do we actually mean? ● We’re referring to the Unix family of operating systems. – Unix from Bell Labs (Research Unix) – GNU/Linux – Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) Unix – Mac OS X – Minix (Intel loves it) – ...and many more Warning signs: 1/2 If your operating system shows many of the following symptoms, it may be a Unix: – Multi-user, multi-tasking – Hierarchical filesystem, with a single root – Devices represented as files – Streams of text everywhere as a user interface – “Formatless” files ● Data is just data: streams of bytes saved in sequence ● There isn’t a “text file” attribute, for example Warning signs: 2/2 – Bourne-style shell with a “pipe”: ● $ program1 | program2 – “Shebangs” specifying file interpreters: ● #!/bin/sh – C programming language baked in everywhere – Classic programs: sh(1), awk(1), grep(1), sed(1) – Users with beards, long hair, glasses, and very strong opinions... Nobody saw it coming! “The number of Unix installations has grown to 10, with more expected.” — Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie (1972) ● Unix in some flavour is in servers, desktops, embedded software (including Intel’s management engine), mobile phones, network equipment, single-board computers..
    [Show full text]
  • Linux Command Line: Aliases, Prompts and Scripting
    Linux Command Line: Aliases, Prompts and Scri... 1 Linux Command Line: Aliases, Prompts and Scripting By Steven Gordon on Wed, 23/07/2014 - 7:46am Here are a few notes on using the Bash shell that I have used as a demo to students. It covers man pages, aliases, shell prompts, paths and basics of shell scripting. For details, see the many free manuals of Bash shell scripting. 1. Man Pages Man pages are the reference manuals for commands. Reading the man pages is best when you know the command to use, but cannot remember the syntax or options. Simply type man cmd and then read the manual. E.g.: student@netlab01:~$ man ls If you don't know which command to use to perform some task, then there is a basic search feature called apropos which will do a keyword search through an index of man page names and short descriptions. You can run it using either the command apropos or using man -k. E.g.: student@netlab01:~$ man superuser No manual entry for superuser student@netlab01:~$ apropos superuser su (1) - change user ID or become superuser student@netlab01:~$ man -k "new user" newusers (8) - update and create new users in batch useradd (8) - create a new user or update default new user information Some common used commands are actually not standalone program, but commands built-in to the shell. For example, below demonstrates the creation of aliases using alias. But there is no man page for alias. Instead, alias is described as part of the bash shell man page.
    [Show full text]
  • Standard TECO (Text Editor and Corrector)
    Standard TECO TextEditor and Corrector for the VAX, PDP-11, PDP-10, and PDP-8 May 1990 This manual was updated for the online version only in May 1990. User’s Guide and Language Reference Manual TECO-32 Version 40 TECO-11 Version 40 TECO-10 Version 3 TECO-8 Version 7 This manual describes the TECO Text Editor and COrrector. It includes a description for the novice user and an in-depth discussion of all available commands for more advanced users. General permission to copy or modify, but not for profit, is hereby granted, provided that the copyright notice is included and reference made to the fact that reproduction privileges were granted by the TECO SIG. © Digital Equipment Corporation 1979, 1985, 1990 TECO SIG. All Rights Reserved. This document was prepared using DECdocument, Version 3.3-1b. Contents Preface ............................................................ xvii Introduction ........................................................ xix Preface to the May 1985 edition ...................................... xxiii Preface to the May 1990 edition ...................................... xxv 1 Basics of TECO 1.1 Using TECO ................................................ 1–1 1.2 Data Structure Fundamentals . ................................ 1–2 1.3 File Selection Commands ...................................... 1–3 1.3.1 Simplified File Selection .................................... 1–3 1.3.2 Input File Specification (ER command) . ....................... 1–4 1.3.3 Output File Specification (EW command) ...................... 1–4 1.3.4 Closing Files (EX command) ................................ 1–5 1.4 Input and Output Commands . ................................ 1–5 1.5 Pointer Positioning Commands . ................................ 1–5 1.6 Type-Out Commands . ........................................ 1–6 1.6.1 Immediate Inspection Commands [not in TECO-10] .............. 1–7 1.7 Text Modification Commands . ................................ 1–7 1.8 Search Commands .
    [Show full text]
  • Uulity Programs and Scripts
    U"lity programs and scripts Thomas Herring [email protected] U"lity Overview • In this lecture we look at a number of u"lity scripts and programs used in the gamit/globk suite of programs. • We examine and will show examples in the areas of – Organizaon/Pre-processing – Scripts used by sh_gamit but useful stand-alone – Evaluang results • Also examine some basic unix, csh, bash programs and method. 11/19/12 Uli"es Lec 08 2 Guide to scripts • There are many scripts in the ~/gg/com directory and you should with "me looks at all these scripts because they oSen contain useful guides as to how to do certain tasks. – Look the programs used in the scripts because these show you the sequences and inputs needed for different tasks – Scrip"ng methods are useful when you want to automate tasks or allow easy re-generaon of results. – Look for templates that show how different tasks can be accomplished. • ~/gg/kf/uls and ~/gg/gamit/uls contain many programs for u"lity tasks and these should be looked at to see what is available. 11/19/12 Uli"es Lec 08 3 GAMIT/GLOBK Utilities" 1.! Organization/Pre-processing" sh_get_times: List start/stop times for all RINEX files" sh_upd_stnfo: Add entries to station.info from RINEX headers" convertc: Transform coodinates (cartesian/geodetic/spherical)" glist: List sites for h-files in gdl; check coordinates, models " corcom: Rotate an apr file to a different plate frame" unify_apr: Set equal velocities/coordinates for glorg equates" sh_dos2unix: Remove the extra CR from each line of a file" doy: Convert to/from DOY, YYMMDD, JD, MJD, GPSW" " " " GAMIT/GLOBK Utilities (cont)" 2.
    [Show full text]
  • Linux? POSIX? GNU/Linux? What Are They? a Short History of POSIX (Unix-Like) Operating Systems
    Unix? GNU? Linux? POSIX? GNU/Linux? What are they? A short history of POSIX (Unix-like) operating systems image from gnu.org Mohammad Akhlaghi Instituto de Astrof´ısicade Canarias (IAC), Tenerife, Spain (founder of GNU Astronomy Utilities) Most recent slides available in link below (this PDF is built from Git commit d658621): http://akhlaghi.org/pdf/posix-family.pdf Understanding the relation between the POSIX/Unix family can be confusing Image from shutterstock.com The big bang! In the beginning there was ... In the beginning there was ... The big bang! Fast forward to 20th century... Early computer hardware came with its custom OS (shown here: PDP-7, announced in 1964) Fast forward to the 20th century... (∼ 1970s) I AT&T had a Monopoly on USA telecommunications. I So, it had a lot of money for exciting research! I Laser I CCD I The Transistor I Radio astronomy (Janskey@Bell Labs) I Cosmic Microwave Background (Penzias@Bell Labs) I etc... I One of them was the Unix operating system: I Designed to run on different hardware. I C programming language was designed for writing Unix. I To keep the monopoly, AT&T wasn't allowed to profit from its other research products... ... so it gave out Unix for free (including source). Unix was designed to be modular, image from an AT&T promotional video in 1982 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc4ROCJYbm0 User interface was only on the command-line (image from late 80s). Image from stevenrosenberg.net. AT&T lost its monopoly in 1982. Bell labs started to ask for license from Unix users.
    [Show full text]
  • What Is Vi ? Vi History Characteristics of Vi
    Arvind Maskara 2/15/16 What is vi ? The visual editor initially developed on Unix. The vi editor (“vee eye”) Before vi the primary editor used on Unix was the line editor n User was able to see/edit only one line of the text NOTE: You will not be examined at a time The vi editor is a text editor, not a text on the detailed usage of vi, but formatter (like MS Word) you should know the basics n You cannot set margins… n Center headings… n Set text as bold… Adapted by Dr. Andrew Vardy from www.wildbill.org/rose/Fall09/ch03.ppt supercomputingchallenge.org/98-99/stts-99/vi.ppt Vi History Characteristics of vi Originally written by Bill Joy in 1976. The vi editor is: Who is Bill Joy? n Very powerful n He co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982 and served as chief scientist until 2003. n …But cryptic Joy's prowess as a computer The best way to learn vi commands is programmer is legendary, with an oft- to use them told anecdote that he wrote the vi editor So practice… in a weekend. Joy denies this assertion. vi editor 1 Arvind Maskara 2/15/16 Vim equals Vi Starting vi Most installations of vi actually use a First, see what version of vi is installed different program called vim on your system through “man vi” n Vi Improved Type vi <filename> at the shell prompt n http://www.vim.org After pressing enter the command n Charityware – donations accepted to help prompt disappears and you see tilde(~) children in Uganda through the ICCF characters on all the lines n Main author is Bram Moolenaar These tilde characters indicate that the line is blank vi Window Display Vi is a Modal Editor There are (at least) three modes in vi Line one n Command mode (a.k.a.
    [Show full text]