Re: Why C for the Open Source Movement?

["thvv" <thvv64@gmail.com>]

Ludovic Brenta wrote:
> zeta_no writes :
> > Isn't the Unix tradition based on well crafted design mecanisms?
>
> No, it's not. It started as a hack made by a few long-haired, rebel
> programmers in their spare time, bazaar-style. In contrast, MULTICS was
> intended to be a beautiful cathedral of software, and I think it was
> written in PL/I not C. MULTICS is still not complete, and I think it'll
> take as long to complete as it took actual cathedrals :)

Dick Gabriel is welcome to his opinion, but as someone who worked
on Multics with the creators of UNIX in the 60s I have to say that I
don't
see it that way. Multics was not rigorously planned first and then
executed; our design and implementation evolved over 20 years.
We did have this pattern of writing something and discussing it before
coding, and often the discussion led to an improved design. Multicians
felt that we were rebels, back in the 60s, fighting against batch
processing,
writing systems in assembler, and using human waves of programmers.
We advocated flexibility, virtual memory, interactiveness, and powerful
tools.  Ken and Dennis did not have the longest hair or wildest beards
on the Multics development team.

Multics was written in PL/I. The Bell Labs folks encountered BCPL
at Project MAC in the 60s and created B and then C in the 70s.
Multics was not "complete" when Bull stopped development on it in
the mid 80s: no operating system is ever "complete" since user needs,
hardware, and competitiion keep changing requirements.

For more information, see
  http://www.multicians.org/myths.html
  http://www.multicians.org/pl1.html