On Mi 09 Mär 2022 at 11:11, Johnny Billquist <bqt@softjar.se> wrote:

> On 2022-03-09 06:46, Alan Bawden wrote:
>> Rich Alderson <news@alderson.users.panix.com> writes:
>> Lars Brinkhoff <lars.spam@nocrew.org> writes:
>> > I'd be very impressed if you had 50 years of Emacs experience!
>> > I wouldn't be surprised to see it as a requirement in a job listing
>> > though.
>> I have 45 years of EMACS experience...
>> I have 46.
>> And I'd be suprised if anybody here can beat that, since I started
>> using
>> it during the week after its first "official" release.
>
> I'm at a lowly 39. :-)
>
> Johnny
Oh my! I'm at a lowly 35.

'Andreas

Alan Bawden <alan@csail.mit.edu> writes:

> Rich Alderson <news@alderson.users.panix.com> writes:

> Lars Brinkhoff <lars.spam@nocrew.org> writes:

> > I'd be very impressed if you had 50 years of Emacs experience!
> > I wouldn't be surprised to see it as a requirement in a job listing
> > though.

> I have 45 years of EMACS experience...

> I have 46.

> And I'd be suprised if anybody here can beat that, since I started using
> it during the week after its first "official" release.

I was lucky. One of the senior programmers at the UChicago Comp Center went to
Marlboro for TOPS-20 training, and came back with a tape with a bunch of stuff
on it, including both EMACS and ZORK (including the TOPS-20 runtime for MDL).

I got intrigued, and started reading the TECO sources for EMACS. The rest, as
is said, is history.

(Hi, Alan!)

--
Rich Alderson news@alderson.users.panix.com
Audendum est, et veritas investiganda; quam etiamsi non assequamur,
omnino tamen proprius, quam nunc sumus, ad eam perveniemus.
--Galen

In article <t07t1s$lie$2@news.misty.com>,
Johnny Billquist <bqt@softjar.se> wrote:
>On 2022-03-08 10:08, Andreas Eder wrote:
>> On Mo 07 Mär 2022 at 11:47, Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Scott Lurndal <scott@slp53.sl.home> wrote:
>>> I’m always amazed when I try to use some piece of software I used to use
>>> years ago how primitive it seems now. Back then non-ISPF TSO or DOS EDLIN
>>> seemed like usable, if not much fun, pieces of software. Playing with old
>>> systems like TSS or Multics it seems like my biggest problem is lack of a
>>> decent editor.
>>
>> Well, on Multics you have Emacs!
>
>Really? EMACS start off on PDP-10s, written in TECO. Not saying that
>there couldn't have been a version for Multics, but that was mostly a
>crowd that eventually gave us things like ed and vi.

Yes really. Not only was there emacs on Multics, it is written
in Lisp.

https://multicians.org/mepap.html

See also AIM-519A, which mentions Multics emacs and Lisp:
http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/mit/ai/aim/AIM-519A.pdf

Ed is descended from qedx, which is another Multics editor. Vi
of course came from Berkeley.

- Dan C.

On Tuesday, March 8, 2022 at 5:34:20 PM UTC-5, Rich Alderson wrote:
> I have 45 years of EMACS experience...

41. I learned it because my mentor when I first joined DEC used it, and between us, we would eat the performance of a VAX/780. It's still the editor I use, though I'm starting to use e.g. VSCode occasionally. With Emacs keybindings, 'course.

-+- Sid

On Tuesday, March 8, 2022 at 9:46:29 PM UTC-8, Alan Bawden wrote:
> Rich Alderson <ne...@alderson.users.panix.com> writes:
>
> I have 45 years of EMACS experience...
> I have 46.
>
> And I'd be suprised if anybody here can beat that, since I started using
> it during the week after its first "official" release.
>
> --
> Alan Bawden

I'm also a 46er. In fact, my first real editor was EMACS from when I worked at LCS.
And I've used it ever since. I still use ITS Emacs and Multics Emacs (on simulators,
or course) every day. And naturally, it is my editor of choice on macOS and Linux.

On 2022-03-11 14:56, Dan Cross wrote:
> Ed is descended from qedx, which is another Multics editor. Vi
> of course came from Berkeley.

vi is just visual ed. :-)
(And I can't understand the recent craze about it...)

Johnny

On Friday, March 11, 2022 at 8:56:11 AM UTC-5, Dan Cross wrote:
> Ed is descended from qedx, which is another Multics editor. Vi
> of course came from Berkeley.

QED started on the Berkeley Timesharing System (SDS 940) c.1967.
Ken Thompson brought it east, implementing it first on CTSS, and then Multics and GECOS, and as ed on PDP-7 UNIX:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QED_(text_editor)
https://dbpedia.org/page/QED_(text_editor)

Phil
(EMACS user for 41y, starting as a tourist on ITS, FINE on TOPS-10, then TOPS-20 EMACS, then CCA EMACS on Unix, followed by GNU. My oldest .emacs file is from 1988).

On Saturday, March 12, 2022 at 2:40:08 PM UTC-5, Phil Budne wrote:
> Ken Thompson brought it east, implementing it first on CTSS, and then Multics and GECOS, and as ed on PDP-7 UNIX

P.S. I regard vi as useful only as a read-mostly version of "more", or for emergency use in cramped places like Docker containers or embedded systems (tho I've been known to compile micro EMACS or ELLE).

In article <aa1a331f-9ba7-43fc-81ff-4efd9db4bc02n@googlegroups.com>,
Phil Budne <phil.budne@gmail.com> wrote:
>On Friday, March 11, 2022 at 8:56:11 AM UTC-5, Dan Cross wrote:
>> Ed is descended from qedx, which is another Multics editor. Vi
>> of course came from Berkeley.
>
>QED started on the Berkeley Timesharing System (SDS 940) c.1967.
>Ken Thompson brought it east, implementing it first on CTSS, and then Multics and GECOS, and as ed on PDP-7 UNIX:
>
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QED_(text_editor)
>https://dbpedia.org/page/QED_(text_editor)

Thank you, these are great points and I stand corrected. Dennis
Ritchie's brief history of QED is also illuminating:
https://www.bell-labs.com/usr/dmr/www/qed.html

- Dan C.

Johnny Billquist <bqt@softjar.se> wrote:
> I'm at a lowly 39. :-)
>
> Johnny

Are you counting AMIS years tho? ;-)

I've got 27 years of ZMACS experience, YOW.

On 2022-03-13 23:20, Stephen M. Jones wrote:
> Johnny Billquist <bqt@softjar.se> wrote:
>> I'm at a lowly 39. :-)
>>
>> Johnny
>
> Are you counting AMIS years tho? ;-)
>
> I've got 27 years of ZMACS experience, YOW.

My first exposure was indeed with AMIS (on a PDP-11), but I hit PDP-10
machines not long after. I can't even recall when I first saw TECO EMACS
the first time. I played with ITS for the first time about 39 years ago
as well.

Johnny

On Monday, March 7, 2022 at 5:42:46 PM UTC+1, Johnny Billquist wrote:
> On 2022-03-06 19:34, Peter Flass wrote:
> > Johnny Billquist <b...@softjar.se> wrote:
> >> I am of course, late to the game. And the bootcamp have already
> >> happened. So people might already know the answers and comments I'm
> >> about to give, but anyway...
> >>>> How does TOPS DCL compare with VMS DCL?
> >>>
> >>> Again, there ain't no "TOPS".
> >>
> >> [...MIC and and PCL text deleted...]
> >> I think the question wasn't about scripting, but interactive use here.
> >> Tops-10 or TOPS-20 did not have DCL. I can't remember what the
> >> interactive command line interpreter was called in Tops-10, but in
> >> TOPS-10 it's EXEC.
> >> EXEC is for most people a much nicer environment than DCL. Command name
> >> completion, filename completion, guide words, interactive help... It's
> >> just so much nicer than DCL.
> >>
> >> Scripting wise, it's much more muddled.
> >>
> >> Apart from user interaction, some things are better, and some are worse
> >> in VMS. It's hard to answer a generic question like "how were they
> >> different", or what advantages one had over the other, unless we want to
> >> just talk specific technical details. Because the rest is pretty subjective.
> >>
> >> Johnny
> >>
> >
> > It’s been a lot of years, but doesn’t VMS DCL have command-line completion?
> > (sorry for all the included text, I can’t seem to get this darn thing to
> > select text to delete)
> No, it don't. On VAX, there was a hack (from DECUS?) called DCLCOMPLETE
> which sortof added this. But I don't think it was ever made to work on
> any other hardware platform, it was sortof not working perfectly, and it
> was definitely not something DEC ever included.
>
> Johnny

Someone asked me a long time ago if I could port DCLCOMPLETE to Alpha as it is VAX MACRO, I started but never completed it.

^P

On Tuesday, March 8, 2022 at 11:34:20 PM UTC+1, Rich Alderson wrote:
> Lars Brinkhoff <lars...@nocrew.org> writes:
>
> > Peter Flass wrote:
> >> I've managed to get fifty years in without having to learn emacs. I don't
> >> want to have to start now.
>
> > I'd be very impressed if you had 50 years of Emacs experience!
> > I wouldn't be surprised to see it as a requirement in a job listing
> > though.
> I have 45 years of EMACS experience...
> --
> Rich Alderson ne...@alderson.users.panix.com
> Audendum est, et veritas investiganda; quam etiamsi non assequamur,
> omnino tamen proprius, quam nunc sumus, ad eam perveniemus.
> --Galen

I have 30 years, even on the AmigaDOS, but probably doesn't even count
^P

On 3/6/2022 12:34 PM, Peter Flass wrote:
> Johnny Billquist <bqt@softjar.se> wrote:
>> On 2022-03-04 22:23, Paul Rubin wrote:
>>> Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> writes:
>>>> It would have to be hard to tell, since the VAX hardware was a lot faster
>>>> than the PDP-10. I enjoyed working with both systems.
>>>
>>> For the first N years, VAXes were much slower than the faster 10's.
>>
>> Not really. The KL10 was about 1.5 MIPS, while the original VAX-11/780
>> was 1 MIPS.
>>
>> Speed parity was basically achieved with the VAX-11/785. After that, the
>> VAXen just were becoming faster.
>>
>> The PDP-10 was never a speed daemon. It was helped a lot by being
>> offloaded for terminal I/O by the front end processor. But with the
>> spreading of ethernet, all of that work started moving back to the
>> PDP-10 itself, at which point you really felt the pain. 40 users on a
>> -2060 was usually not all that much fun, I can tell you. Heck, even 20
>> was painful.
>>
>>> Faster VAXes appeared later, and eventually overtook the 10 mostly due
>>> to improved chip technology. The main VAX for a long time was the
>>> original 11/780 (introduced 1977) which was the canonical 1 MIP machine.
>>> A KL-10 (introduced 1975) was maybe 3x that, about equivalent(?) to the
>>> VAX 8600 that that came out in 1984.
>>
>> KL-10 was about 1.5x. The 8600, introduced in 1984 was 4x the 11/780,
>> and was noticeably faster than the KL-10.
>>
>>> I don't know about today, but legend has it that a few 11/780's were
>>> kept operational for decades after that model's obsolescence, to serve
>>> as benchmark hosts for MIPs rating of newer cpus.
>>
>> I think I heard such stories, but I never put any value to them. Another
>> story/problem is that the original MIPS definition was also based on a
>> specific version of OS and compiler. And as these evolved, the
>> VAX-11/780 actually became significantly faster than 1 MIPS. Which
>> exposed a problem with the whole MIPS definition. And also meant keeping
>> any VAXen around for reference was pretty pointless.
>>
>> And that's a big reason DEC themselves never used MIPS. They instead
>> talked about VUPs. Where a VAX-11/780 was by definition 1 VUP. And it
>> was more properly based on the actual processing speed, and not
>> depending on various software.
>>
>> Johnny
>>
>
> IBM never used MIPS either, but rated processors relative to each other. I
> always thought they did this to avoid comparisons to other vendors’
> machines, but it was probably as much because it was meaningless, as you
> say.
>
MIPS in Outer Space

The processor used in the original Sony PlayStation is currently guiding
a space probe the size of a grand piano towards Pluto? Yep, the same
MIPS R3000 CPU that once ran Final Fantasy VII and Metal Gear Solid was
repurposed by NASA in 2006 to fire thrusters, monitor sensors, and
transmit data from the New Horizons space probe.

https://www.theverge.com/2015/1/15/7551365/playstation-cpu-powers-new-horizons-pluto-probe

--

Charles Richmond

--
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
www.avast.com

On 3/7/2022 4:02 PM, Vir Campestris wrote:
> On 07/03/2022 16:53, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>> On 2022-03-06 20:17, Paul Rubin wrote:
>>> Johnny Billquist <bqt@softjar.se> writes:
>>>> The KL10 was about 1.5 MIPS, while the original VAX-11/780 was 1 MIPS.
>>>
>>> Ah ok, for some reason I had thought the KL10 was faster than that.
>>> EIther way: "36 bits -- a full DEC"  ;-)
>>
>> You are not alone. Lots of people seem to think the KL10 was way
>> faster than it was.
>>
>> Anyway, I still appreciate the 36-bit quote. But deep down inside, I'm
>> a PDP-11 person. :-D
>>
>
> TOPS-10 was where I first met assembler.
>
> I thought the KL10 was _slower_ than that.
>
> And how come I can still remember the instruction word format
> (9-4-1-4-18) 40 years later?
>
> Andy
>

"The Dinner Cafe's food stays hot!!! You can feel the food burning in
your stomach hours later..." ;-)

And how many advertising jingles can you sing... from television
commercials that were shown 40 years ago??? I can sing quite a few...
Perhaps I can make money with this... people might pay me *not* to
sing!!! ;-)

"A gentleman is a man who can play the bagpipes... and doesn't."

--

Charles Richmond

--
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
www.avast.com

On 3/9/2022 12:48 AM, Lars Brinkhoff wrote:
> Alan Bawden wrote:
>> Rich Alderson wrote:
>>> I have 45 years of EMACS experience...
>>
>> I have 46. And I'd be suprised if anybody here can beat that, since I
>> started using it during the week after its first "official" release.
>
> Only those developing "?MACS" could top that, but it will still be 46
> years.
>
> Do you have a (rough) date for this "official" release? Backup records
> have some early timestamps but there is no way to tell what would be
> considered released or still in develoment.
>
> The change of name from ?/?MACS to E/EMACS can be narrowed down to
> November 10-11th 1976, but that is not to say it was "released" at that
> point.

I always thought EMACS was discovered at Sutter's Mill back in '49... ;-)

--

Charles Richmond

--
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
www.avast.com

On 3/8/2022 12:59 PM, Lars Brinkhoff wrote:
> Johnny Billquist wrote:
>> Not saying that there couldn't have been a[n Emacs] version for
>> Multics
>
> You seem vague. I'm here to tell you Multics Emacs was started on March
> 3rd 1978 around 10pm.

Was this after the bartender refused to serve you another drink...
because you already had too much??? ;-) Any screen editor would be
preferable to what you have to do to edit a text field in Windows...

--

Charles Richmond

--
This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software.
www.avast.com

Charles Richmond <codescott@aquaporin4.com> wrote:
> On 3/7/2022 4:02 PM, Vir Campestris wrote:
>> On 07/03/2022 16:53, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>>> On 2022-03-06 20:17, Paul Rubin wrote:
>>>> Johnny Billquist <bqt@softjar.se> writes:
>>>>> The KL10 was about 1.5 MIPS, while the original VAX-11/780 was 1 MIPS.
>>>>
>>>> Ah ok, for some reason I had thought the KL10 was faster than that.
>>>> EIther way: "36 bits -- a full DEC"  ;-)
>>>
>>> You are not alone. Lots of people seem to think the KL10 was way
>>> faster than it was.
>>>
>>> Anyway, I still appreciate the 36-bit quote. But deep down inside, I'm
>>> a PDP-11 person. :-D
>>>
>>
>> TOPS-10 was where I first met assembler.
>>
>> I thought the KL10 was _slower_ than that.
>>
>> And how come I can still remember the instruction word format
>> (9-4-1-4-18) 40 years later?
>>
>> Andy
>>
>
> "The Dinner Cafe's food stays hot!!! You can feel the food burning in
> your stomach hours later..." ;-)
>
> And how many advertising jingles can you sing... from television
> commercials that were shown 40 years ago??? I can sing quite a few...
> Perhaps I can make money with this... people might pay me *not* to
> sing!!! ;-)
>

Do you have a GoFundMe page?

> "A gentleman is a man who can play the bagpipes... and doesn't."
>
>

--
Pete

On Friday, December 23, 2022 at 9:49:39 AM UTC-8, Charles Richmond wrote:

(snip)

> MIPS in Outer Space
>
> The processor used in the original Sony PlayStation is currently guiding
> a space probe the size of a grand piano towards Pluto? Yep, the same
> MIPS R3000 CPU that once ran Final Fantasy VII and Metal Gear Solid was
> repurposed by NASA in 2006 to fire thrusters, monitor sensors, and
> transmit data from the New Horizons space probe.

Some years ago, I knew that Galileo uses the RCA CDP1802, which is
an (early) CMOS 8 bit processor with, as you would expect, no
multiply instruction.

A new compression algorithm was invented after it was launched,
to efficiently use the 1802.

https://ipnpr.jpl.nasa.gov/progress_report/42-119/119M.pdf

That is, to do compression minimizing the 'one' bits on the
factors, so that it can be done fast with shift and add.

Slows down decoding, done on earth, with faster processors.