The History of Unix, Rob Pike
The History of Unix, Rob Pike on HackerTube: recommended by 1 Hacker News commenter across 1 month, 2018–2021.
Rob Pike gives an insider's account of the history of Unix and the development of key pieces of modern computing, including Bell Labs anecdotes.
What HN commenters said
5 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
kickFeb 2020Recommends
Crabs was probably the first graphical prank program—most assuredly the first well-documented one: there are a lot of scattered anecdotes about it around. Here's an amazing talk by Rob Pike where it's casually mentioned, for example: ▶ this video It's not something you see very often anymore, partially because modern windowing systems (and systems in general, really) were built with different security models in mind (you can probably remember a few similar programs released into the wild for real mode operating systems, they were especially common then), but also because windowing systems have moved away from how simple UNIX's windowing system was at the time. It's actually kind of relevant to something that was on the front-page recently: the displays they were using (JERQ/Blit bitmap displays) depended on a routine that Larry Tesler co-invented (the bit blit, hence the name "Blit"). [link] [link] If you want to give it a try, I think 9front ships with a Blit emulator these days; load up v8 and you should have a nice few hours poking around. [link]
in “Crabs: The bitmap terror (1985) [pdf]” · View on HN
raszAug 2021Cites it
another one was BLIT [link] [link] also mentioned in The History of Unix, by Rob Pike ▶ this video then there was Star
in “Xerox Alto Emulator” · View on HN
fjarlqOct 2019Cites it
Videos of Ken Thompson and Rob Pike telling Unix history stories: Ken Thompson (interviewed by Brian Kernighan, 2019, starts after 7m38s): [link] Rob Pike (Unix History presentation, 2018, starts after 3m40s): ▶ this video
in “Unix: A History and a Memoir, by Brian Kernighan” · View on HN
throwaway487550Dec 2018Cites it
▶ this video among other things. These were places where old-school (with classical understanding, if we follow Robert M. Pirsig) people tried to reduce grounded in reality concepts to optimal (as humanly possible) implementations, as opposed to the modern tendency to pile up more and more crap.
in “An Introduction to the EMACS Editor (1978)” · View on HN
wgingNov 2018Cites it
I opened this earlier, and it linked to ▶ this video -- I think a moderator may have 'fixed' it in a really silly way.
in “The History of Unix, by Rob Pike [video]” · View on HN