Subj : Re: What is UNIX? (was: H
To   : POINDEXTER FORTRAN
From : Dumas Walker
Date : Sun Oct 05 2025 09:36:53

>  That list reminded me of some of the "weird" UNIXes out there, like
>  Primos - it ran on top of PRIME/OS on big CDC iron. That was the
>  closest my college came to UNIX, it was great for teaching shell
>  scripts and BASH to tons of college students, but you couldn't develop
>  on it.

I did not realize they had UNIX layers on mainframes back then, but it
makes sense to do so.

>  This was the late '80s. After the weed-out CS classes and a class in
>  assembler on a VAX 11/750, we did all of our compiling on our own PCs.
>  Most people used Turbo C, but I was the oddball (go figure?), I had a
>  deal from the bookstore on Microsoft QuickC, but ended up using EMACS
>  as an IDE with Mark Williams C, with a BASH shell and *nix* commands
>  for DOS.

I used a VAX during college, but more as a "user" and didn't learn much, if
anything, about the underlying OS commands or shell.  The programming
classes I took were both PC-based... BASIC and PASCAL.  The languages that
had more practical application... Assembler, FORTRAN, COBOL... were
reserved for students in the engineering school.

I also didn't realize they had BASH shells and *nix commands for DOS back
then.

Luckily, there were a few places in the 1990s where one could get a job
with a related degree and then get OTJ training.  That is where I learned
most of what I know and used professionally.


 * SLMR 2.1a * "And there she was, like double-cherry pie..."
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