[aklug] Re: Breaking News Flash

Amen

On Apr 1, 2010, at 11:26 AM, adam bultman <adamb@glaven.org> wrote:

> For more tl;dr hilarity:
>
> http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5841.txt
>
> Bob Crosby wrote:
>> *C and Unix were just a big prank!*
>> In an announcement that has stunned the computer industry, Ken =20
>> Thompson,
>> Dennis Ritchie and Brian Kernighan admitted that the Unix operating
>> system and C programming language created by them is an elaborate =20
>> April
>> Fools prank kept alive for over 40 years. Speaking at the recent =20
>> Linux
>> Development Forum in Helsinki, Thompson revealed the following:
>>
>> "In 1969, AT&T had just terminated their work with the GE/Honeywell/=20=

>> 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 =20
>> 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 =20
>> environment
>> and Pascal. Dennis and I were responsible for the operating =20
>> 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 ris=20
>> qu=EF=BF=BD
>> allusions. Then Dennis and Brian worked on a truly warped version of
>> Pascal, called 'A'. When we found others were actually trying to =20
>> create
>> real programs with A, we quickly added additional cryptic features =20=

>> 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=3DC;e--;P("_"+(*u++/8)%2))P("|"+(*u/=20=

>> 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 =20=

>> other
>> US corporations actually began trying to use Unix and C! It took =20
>> 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 Ada on the Apple Macintosh for the past few years and
>> feel really guilty about the chaos, confusion and truly bad =20
>> programming
>> that have resulted from our silly prank so long ago."
>>
>> Major Unix and C vendors and customers, including Nokia, HP and Intel
>> have refused comment at this time. Microsoft, a leading vendor of =20
>> BASIC
>> and C tools, including the popular VB.NET and C#, stated they had
>> suspected this for a number of years. They look forward to enhanced
>> reliability and speed in Windows 8. It will be re-written from the
>> ground up in VB.NET and is due out sometime this decade. An IBM
>> spokesman broke into uncontrolled laughter and had to postpone a =20
>> hastily
>> convened news conference concerning the fate of the Blue Gene/V, =20
>> merely
>> stating 'VM will be available Real Soon Now'. A Sun Microsystems
>> spokeswoman merely sipped her java and smiled enigmatically. In a
>> cryptic statement, Professor Wirth of the ETH institute and father of
>> the Pascal, Modula 2 and Oberon structured languages, merely stated =20=

>> that
>> P. T. Barnum was correct.
>>
>>
>>
>> ---------
>> To unsubscribe, send email to <aklug-request@aklug.org>
>> with 'unsubscribe' in the message body.
>>
>>
>
> --=20
> Adam
>
> ---------
> To unsubscribe, send email to <aklug-request@aklug.org>
> with 'unsubscribe' in the message body.
>
---------
To unsubscribe, send email to <aklug-request@aklug.org>
with 'unsubscribe' in the message body.
Received on Thu Apr 1 12:56:59 2010