AT&T Archives: The UNIX Operating System

[@ale_schneider]

No matter what, I'll never be as cool as Kernighan casually explaining UNIX while resting his feet atop a desk at Bell Laboratories.

[@dieselscience]

hiking boots....

[@psalc1]

I for one, welcome our new machine overlords!

[@MrSHowVIdeo]

dieselscience lmao his style is great

[@snickers3340]

I beg to differ.............anyone who's watching this.... is already cool just by their presence.

[@Zack-xz1ph]

He's like the Carl Sagan of computing

[@samsmith1580]

C and the Shell. Still here more than 40 years later. So many languages have come and gone in the meantime.

[@k.osiyuk]

I have your book, and I`m reading it, and I love it.

[@dennisritchie149]

It's literally the only book in the world that is worth the price charged...and much much more. Take your time with it; it's a literal piece of history.

[@k.osiyuk]

I imagine it`s a piece of future...

[@vurpo7080]

Still here 40 years later, and still stuck 40 years in the past...

[@MilanVVVVV]

vurpo Yet you can't go without it.

[@james1787]

I met Dennis Ritchie when working at Bell Labs in the 90s.. it was such an honor to meet him.

[@UmarTahir]

Dude, that is so cool! Respect to you man, you're a legend! 😁✌

[@james1787]

@@UmarTahir Thanks!! My boss at the time introduced us when he came in the room to pickup something he printed (we had a room with specialized printers which was one of the things we maintained). So much fundemental technology of things the world uses today came from there, it was such an honor to work there the few years I did!

[@UmarTahir]

@@james1787 I always find it incredible to hear about how rare technology like printers were just a few decades ago. I'm a college student majoring in math and minoring in computer science, so I've started to learn a bit of the early history of computer science, and it fascinates me to meet and hear people's stories of how it was like programming back then. So thank you for sharing your story! 😁

[@james1787]

@@UmarTahir It's amazing how computers have evolved over the decades. I remember some of the "older guys" showing me their collection of punch cards they used to program computers. I could not even fathom that! Even with my 25+ years in IT/Computers... there have been substantial changes. When I started all consumer communications were over telephone lines and modems. Businesses did have some circuits connecting offices. The world wide web was just barely starting - I remember the first browsers and using the web at Bell Labs before it was readily available to the rest of the world. Things change so often - in another 25 years we'll look at what we are doing today and think "wow, those were the dark ages!".

[@UmarTahir]

@@james1787 Programming with punch cards, wow 😯 I genuinely could not even imagine it lol. And it's really cool that you've been able to witness this evolution throughout your career. I imagine it must have been so exciting each step of the way. And I actually didn't know the web was initially limited to just Bell Labs, it really is a history-making place like you said. So cool, I hope to visit one day! And you're right, I can't even imagine what another 25 years will bring to the IT world.

[@LemystereManCarloc]

These guys built the backbone of almost every server, mobile device, iot, and apple device in existence. Unix + C has held for 40 years.

[@luimu]

Linux != Unix

[@antoniofickel9373]

@@luimu linux is a unix clone and was written in unix so these guys started it all

[@luimu]

@@antoniofickel9373 BSD is closer to Unix than linux. I didn't say that these guys didn't start it all. I just merely stated the fact that Linux isn't Unix.

[@nikolaisalikov1257]

@@luimu MacOS == Unix GNU/Linux == Unix-like OS

[@Sick1982]

Guys, who cares, lookup the amount of forks and merges which were done over time. You can't just say Unix and refer to a single thing. And if you ever worked with hp-ux, irix, sunos, ... you'll quickly realise what a blessing the more recent BSD's and Linux distro's are ;’)

[@dantescanline]

Brian Kernighan's demo of piping utilities together at 6:00 is really an amazing piece of education. It's careful, clear, doesn't use big words, goes step by step and shows you a powerful real world example of the concept he's trying to explain.

[@tizianschmidlin5411]

Yeah! And so casual! He's the archetype of the guy who doesn't care that he's doing an educational video in the way he presents himself, yet still manages to give the simplest introduction to piping I've ever seen. Brilliant!

[@jmclabexperience]

So true. Nowadays, a "program that improves itself" running on a terminal with a time-sharing kernel would be called a scalable AI algorithm running on-demand in the cloud, which means nothing.

[@ScoutSniperMC]

Brain Kernighan also writes amazing books for programmers, he does a great job at explaining things.

[@koffiezet]

@@JohnHoward_ Check out the Computerphile channel, it has quite a few videos with him - and they're always very nice...

[@bennri]

That's been the Hallmark of Bell Labs forever. I worked there as an intern in 1981, and the BSTJ was a great way to learn what they were working on.

[@AlexandreGurchumelia]

There is an old saying from the ancient times: "What one programmer does in one month, two programmers do in two."

[@Blippity_Bloop64]

I love this one.

[@ThanhNguyen-pe5rk]

especially more so when two programmers don’t see eye to eye.

[@Menaceblue3]

That's like *"buy a pack of 4 for $9.99 or a pack of 10 for $24.99!"*

[@AlexandreGurchumelia]

@ᚱᛰUᛠӖᚱ ᚦᗩӖϻᛰᚤ It's fairly trivial, you just biject it to monoidal category equipped with Waffenstoffer's non-degenerate norm.

[@AlexandreGurchumelia]

@ᚱᛰUᛠӖᚱ ᚦᗩӖϻᛰᚤ Those that do understand computer science, those that don't and those who haven't heard this joke in base 3.

[@jnrivers]

I don't think many people realize what a masterpiece Unix is. It's quite the accomplishment.

[@jamesb8305]

Imagine a world without iPhones or Androids...

[@meismehaha]

+James B Interestingly enough, iOS is a UNIX system. Well, they can't actually say it's UNIX for licensing reasons but it's based on OS X/macOS which is actually UNIX certified.

[@manysnakes]

I think that was James' point.

[@techmage89]

gespilk We want computers to do far more things, and far more complex things, than ever before. That will naturally be hard. We also have a lot of old systems that maybe weren't designed to work the way we want them to work now.

[@davidporowski9512]

proteusx Perhaps not idiots, just trying to compete (against GNU-LINUX)

[@dr-funk]

Holy shit that visualization just made me realize why it's called a shell. It's the shell of the kernel.

[@nnywadd]

Me too bro, me too

[@bobba84]

Holy shit! Your comment made me realise!

[@alessandrotrezza37]

😅

[@venture3800]

that moment when

[@drygordspellweaver8761]

Bash = born again shell

[@wquayle9229]

I started my career as a UNIX systems admin at Bell Labs in 1986. What an awesome blast from the past, this is.

[@danielweigert2856]

Holmdel 1987 - Offer Integration Lab, then Dept 54121 in 1989

[@IllusionSector]

@@ciscornBIG Gladly! Back in the day, I developed a computer program that would convert a digital image into zeros and ones on the screen. Then, you would pick up your rotary dial phone and call whomever you wanted to send the images and read them the binary data. (e.g., _Zero, one, one, zero, one, zero, zero,..._ etc.) And that's how the first ever dic pic was sent.

[@techwithtee8721]

@@IllusionSector wow!

[@pfos]

010 (the infamous olo)

[@bobasawrus]

Bill! In Naperville per chance?

[@YourModulesMayVary]

19:18 "so along the way in the course of the unix systems development, Dennis Ritchie created the C language" I love how this is so casually dropped in.

[@goodshowmanythanks]

”So I decided to create C.” Absolutely godlike.

[@nikolascoleman]

So anyways I started coding

[@rum-ham]

As a Linux (and Mac) user it's amazing how everything they are demonstrating is still perfectly relevant on these modern OSes. Unix was genius.

[@ccp_fact_checker]

It is amazing to think if these guys did not create unix, would we be running ICL George ,IBM MVS, or DEC OpenVMS on our smart phones!!! and Google/Apple were little companies that did not track everything you do.

[@Мойевропейскийжидобандеровский]

It's amazing how unix people hold on things that are from 70th and don't want to introduce something new.

[@lickablestinkage7783]

@@Мойевропейскийжидобандеровский its because its so good we dont need anything new. If it aint broke dont fix it

[@The_Ballo]

Great...now how the hell do we get out of this mess?

[@Мойевропейскийжидобандеровский]

@@The_Ballo hahahaha 😁😁😁😁 begin with inplementing powershell-like object piping instead of byte tossing.

[@MikeLavett]

These geniuses were my heroes like rock stars. Once at a USENIX conference, I saw Dennis Ritchie talking to 3-4 people. Having never met him, I was not going to miss a chance to shake his hand, so I walked up to this group, stuck my hand out he shook my hand. I was so star-struck, that I blurted out "So glad to meet you Dr. Kernighan"... After AT&T bought BellSouth where I worked, I sent Dr. Ritchie an email describing my incredibly embarrassing moment. He replied with "that's ok, I often get mistaken for Brian" I still have those emails on a 3.5" floppy

[@FreeSpeechWarrior]

Beautiful story my friend. Thank you so much for sharing it.

[@seekilm_]

I love internet for this kind of stories. And, the fact that you store that email on a floppy disk(too young for that). Thanks for sharing.

[@clarkflavor]

[@khelben1979]

I really appreciate the lack of background music in this clip! :)

[@userou-ig1ze]

most underrated comment ever

[@shnooog1]

there's a sick outro snippet. check it out.

[@DocDawning]

I love how even-though this is very dated, it remains a completely relevant introduction. I send this video to folks frequently.

[@alexxx4434]

Old but Gold

[@merica1354]

@jonny j You mean the modern world would be better. Right?

[@elgeneralxx]

@suny123boy1 im sorry but that victor guy is just creepy!!!

[@atlantic_love]

Totally agree. It's a fantastic video. I just showed it to my husband. I full expect him to start programming the new operating system UNICorn. :D

[@heinoustentacles5719]

If it's completely relevant, then how is it dated?

[@kakhak]

Biggest achievment of mankind in coding. Mother of all modern operation systems. What kind of genuine brain can compose such kind of brilliant, priceless piece of programming code...

[@ccp_fact_checker]

Think of the companies that have made Trillions off the back of Unix: An operating system for mankind and now an operating system to track mankind!! Kept me in a job all my life though from leaving school to just about to retire.

[@Nucknyan]

Brian Kernighan is the only guy in this video who doesn't seem like an awkward 80s nerd. His interview style is surprisingly modern.

[@Thesamdeman22]

i know lol, I was just watching the computerphile interview with him, and when he came up in this interview at first I didn't recognize his face, but his _voice_ and _style_ were precisely the same XD

[@samsmith1580]

I was just thinking how relaxed and informal the workplace was. Appearances didn't matter. Contrast that to now with all the posing, posturing and arrogance. Also all these guys would be fired on day one for being too old.

[@cleoz9274]

Did you mean AWKward?

[@samsmith1580]

***** Did you mean GIT out?

[@cleoz9274]

I'd much prefer if he'd told me to get a grep on myself. )

[@gylgameshofuruk]

And then Linus Torvalds based his LINUX OS on UNIX. Something great was used for something truly revolutionary. Also amazing how slow paced and calm that age still was. So many "tech gurus" today talk about some banal new gizmo with so much irrational exuberance, you would think they just discovered gravity or the electron.

[@_invencible_]

and then he created Linus Tech Tips

[@samgoodwin89]

My thoughts exactly. Software has been taken over by marketing wankers

[@trevor8416]

Really well put. It's almost hilarious to hear them just casually mention these innovations that have shaped our computing world forever.

[@thegougeman]

When you see guys like Alfred V. Aho and followed their career years after this, you really see that we stand on the shoulders of giants. Thank you Kernighan, Ritchie, Thompson, Cherry, Mashey and all the others in this video for all you did in the computing world. Special thank you to AT&T for putting this out there years ago for our knowledge and enjoyment.

[@zenzeleluckymtshali8433]

good morning

[@SkinniJ]

@@zenzeleluckymtshali8433good night

[@SteinGauslaaStrindhaug]

Weird, I only now realized that "shell" and "kernel" were related metaphors. Probably because I grew up knowing first learning about the "shell" as just a name for the command line (I only knew the other meaning of "shell" as the gas company and seashells before that), and then much later learned the name "kernel". I only learned that "kernel" is what you call the seed of a nut or fruit stone, much much later. You learn things in weird orders sometimes when you learn a language as a second language.

[@jimbopaw]

oooooh

[@_chris_6786]

I'm a Linux sysadmin since the mid 2000, and watching this masterpiece makes me feels like I only know the A letter of the alphabet. Thank you for the video.

[@drygordspellweaver8761]

are you able to run a server entirely without a GUI?

[@_chris_6786]

Hello @@drygordspellweaver8761 In Linux, which is my area of expertise, *yes* In fact, and AFAIK, all kinds of servers in Linux are run without GUI, although in some cases you can install a graphical interface to administer the server, but this is not imperative.

[@axlslak]

@@_chris_6786 Not only not imperative, but as I got older, I learned that it is more of a hassle than a gain. It's only a front end for a console based utility. Much better to universally have access to all tools in text mode, than gui.

[@sreenath9587]

Why windows servers can't run like linux servers without a reboot for long time? What do u think? When both are having same hardware specifications etc... Why windows need a reboot or hanging issue?

[@alb12345672]

@@axlslak Windows has more and more Linux now. WSL2, Docker, etc. In 20 years Windows may be a Linux core.

[@ronjon7942]

I wish I had seen this video 20 yrs ago. Just learning the significance of pipes and how revolutionary a concept it was has totally changed my perception of just how fundamental UNIX is. This video is basically chapter1 of every book on the subject and is something that should be required viewing for anyone lucky enough to use to earn a living, accomplish meaningful tasks, and expand knowledge and understanding on a wide variety of scientific, economic and mathematic fields. To me, this has been a very motivating view at a time when I’ve recently done a major re-evaluation of the direction of my second half of my career. I can’t overstate how enlightening it has been to listening to these fore-persons of extremely powerful tools that are so meaningful to so many disparate fields of study…such an authentic and authoritative discussion. I almost can’t wait to apply myself to my new perspective, so changed in a mere 28 minutes.

[@fg-zm2yu]

You can tell these are the guys who developed the system! What a clear and simple way of explaining the main design concepts of Unix. Great documentary!

[@bomlife1572]

INFO: Ken Thompson works at Google, where he co-invented the Go programming language.

[@denischiosa4496]

Wow, happy to know this as a go and fan developer

[@opaaaaaaaaaaa]

These guys are on a way different level in programming and understanding computers. Thank to them we are enjoying most of the modern day technology.

[@onoff5604]

From the 60's through the 80's as a mainframe programmer, my Dad would debug by reading the core dumps of assembler instructions...in hex...Oh, that's where the bug is! Quick fix...run it again!

[@hellowill]

Yeah I guess they understood the hardware and low level stuff. Many devs today start way too high level and never have to appreciate that understanding.

[@_________________404]

Because computers were much simpler back then. You could've understood how a CPU works just from the diagrams and logic gates because it wasn't as hyper-complex as today.

[@datasailor8132]

Sigh. I knew all these guys except Lorinda Cherry. I went to work at Bell Labs in Piscataway, NJ, right out of the army in 1972 retiring in 1999. John "Small is Beautiful" Mashey was a particular friend. I was working on one of those Multi-Man-Millenia projects when a co-worker got us an account on a PDP-45 in 1974. They wpuldn't let us have individual accounts so we shared one with the initials of our supervisor, ffk. We wrote our mainframe destined code there and sent it over to the mainframe via RJE. This was on the first release of the Programmer's Workbench. Release 3 was sold to the outside as System III. There was an internal only release 4, and release 5 was sold as System V.

[@thecandyman9308]

Wow. You were there on the ground level. I have a love/hate relationship with computing. Love it in the way there is so much possibility in this "mystery box" but hate it in the way that it's become this tether with an invisible chain for any of us that work in offices. What kinds of discussion was taking place in this circle re: the possibility for this technology to be a benefit or a detriment in the business world? Could/did you guys foresee the negative impact of say, MS, in the coming decades? Any insight as to where people saw this stuff going around this time would be great to hear. :)

[@diegopineda8840]

Awesome

[@smorrow]

Damn, you knew Ken Thompson?

[@L0j1k]

Man I'd love to smoke a joint with you.

[@james1787]

I worked briefly at Murray Hill Bell Labs in the 90's early in my IT career. My boss introduced me to Dennis Ritchie, what an honor it was to meet him!

[@MindoverMatrix2012]

This could be the best television program I ever seen, no joke, a time when the television showed programs that promoted creativity and real learning! I'm happy to read the description, Thanks!

[@AndrewLohmannKent]

Yes no magic no gun shoot out. Plenty of I see I can do that!

[@youreale]

Completely agreed.

[@easlern]

Pretty sure this is a corporate ad not meant for television. America was watching Gunsmoke, TV wasn’t very different back then. :)

[@arkadianriver]

Gunsmoke? Love Boat, baby. And Fantasy Island, past my bedtime. :)

[@merica1354]

@@arkadianriver According to my mom, Magnum PI and Miami Vice were all the rage. Gunsmote ended in 1975 (7 years before this video).

[@tawpgk]

Met Dennis Ritchie 40 years ago at a conference luncheon in NY. Quite a jovial outgoing sort for such a genius.

[@techbear82]

Every computer science major should see this.

[@kristiyanivanov7414]

Joemax McTalkersson Not a major, but definitely a great video to learn something from.

[@stri8ted]

Something about the way these guys articulate themselves, leaves you mesmerized.

[@thiesenf]

It's called Asperger Syndrome... AKA "The Nerd Syndrome"... I am an Aspie myself and a nerd so I immediatly can identify other nerds... How many people in Silicon Walley do you think have Asperger Syndrome? Quite many I would say... Now I am not claiming that all of them actually would be Aspies though... but they're still nerds... and I am a proud nerd

[@Z4KJ0N3S]

I think the guy in the intro is reading his script from big ol' posterboards lol

[@pamus6242]

Thats probably because the population of earth was half and human relationships meant a lot more...when people looked forward to meet other people....

[@getgle]

@@thiesenf It's sad that nerds with nothing wrong with them are diagnosed with a "mental disorder" now.

[@prometheus9443]

@@thiesenf You have no idea what Asperger S. is, nor does any of these people have it. You don't either.

[@mudkatt2003]

you gotta hand it to these folks, you can tell most of them are very shy people and it must have been tough to be on camera. great historic video

[@emilyinder]

history can be interesting too . how they explained filesystem and piping input and output was remarkably simple . look at Brian how he is sitting there like boss ,typing future.

[@alexa.davronov1537]

He was typing future like a boss.

[@mintoo2cool]

holy shit, the gods of computers all packed into one video!

[@GodKing804]

MECCA

[@davidjames666]

I worked down the hall from these guys, and then i moved into the area where the transistor was invented. I retired in 2017

[@reoire843]

The real greybeards in their prime!

[@musembi]

The clarity and simplicity with which they deliver the information is a true testament of their smarts

[@brpadington]

I found an old Unix box in a datacenter that had an uptime of more than 25 years. You don't see that on Windows platforms.

[@PaperBagMan884]

Probably because windows platforms are outputing trillions times more jobs and tasks since it's the consumer OS after all, while the Unix box was sitting there waiting for input and collecting dust.

[@trollsthatlol1]

Ms don't support em even for that half that time

[@DrewWalton]

@@PaperBagMan884 you do realize that Unix and Unix-like systems literally run the backbone of the entire Internet right?

[@MirekFe]

@@PaperBagMan884 The internet runs completely on Unix and Unix like systems. These platforms work 24/7. There is no downtime.

[@PaperBagMan884]

@@MirekFe And the entire desktop market runs on Windows. What's your point? Want to start comparing routers to toaster ovens now? Or how about the fuel efficiency of any given car to a bicycle?

[@TanjoGalbi]

Interesting for me to find this channel in my recommendations. I used to be a professional programmer and my very first paid project was to help write the front end (the part the user uses) for a tape backup system. How is this relevant to the channel? Well, the contract was for AT&T! This was back in the mid 90's, the days of Windows 3.11 (not 3.1 as networking was needed to communicate with the backup servers) and Windows NT. If anyone has programmed for Windows back in those days you would know that the GUI of Windows did not include elements for displaying files or directory tree lists with collapsible entries, those came in Windows 95 onward. I had to hand code our own version for the backup software to use, which I actually enjoyed and led to me specialising in GUI work :) As a side boast: I also had to hand draw the AT&T globe logo for the software as a placeholder image as we were waiting for AT&T to provide digital copies of their logo for use in the software. They were so impressed with it they said to just keep the version I drew :)

[@djtjpain]

Joined KZbin in 2007 too... impressive indeed

[@MnemonicCarrier]

21:23 - that green screen graphics rendering looks ultra-cool and strangely enough, ultra-futuristic! It's amazing!!!

[@oliverhenning8758]

Watching this on a UNIX-like OS in 2019...

[@CatFace8885]

Me too

[@patlh9585]

Same here on a 5 screens Linux Ubuntu desktop *without* any video driver issue! ;-)

[@xfce4491]

Me on Android 😂😂😂

[@2Truth4Liberty]

FreeBSD running Firefox? LOL!!!

[@janskacel9480]

@@2Truth4Liberty UNIX-like OS can be FreeBSD, Linux, Solaris, Android or MacOS.

[@leisergeist]

"Computing is going to be more and more interwoven into peoples lives as the years go by..." Man...... Over 30 years later he's still right

[@GeekBoy03]

LeiserGeist it will never catch on

[@Cobalt985]

The horseless carriage is just a fad. It will never catch on! That's all that reminded me of :P

[@gorillaau]

There will always be a market for quality buggy whips.

[@jSyndeoMusic]

And the phone you’re watching this on runs on a descendent of UNIX! iOS devices (through their Mac lineage) run an offshoot of macOS (aka Darwin), which evolved from NeXTSTEP, whose XNU kernel combined components of CMU’s Mach kernel with components of FreeBSD, which is based on Berkeley’s BSD, which uses the same source code as AT&T’s UNIX shown here. Android’s Linux kernel, however, isn’t directly using UNIX code, but is HEAVILY inspired by it. One way or another, though, as long as you’re not on a Windows device, you’re running an evolution of UNIX and/or its core concepts. I for one find that amazing.

[@MirekFe]

@@jSyndeoMusic And what about all of the internet? Pretty much all websites run on Unix or Unix-like OSs. Amazing world we live in!

[@nbecnbec]

What a beautiful philosophy. No wonder we're still using this paradigm for development work decades later.

[@Lurker1979]

Love AT&T uploading their film archives. Was a treasure trove of tech history.

[@bomlife1572]

Dennis Ritchie is so young. Rest in peace father of C and Unix. 09.09.1941 - 10.12.2011

[@jdubbs.7469]

Took four UNIX classes(w/ GNOME gui) back in the day and I thought I had a solid understanding of it. These guys are on an entirely different level. #respect

[@72launchpad]

AT&T presents: Unix and you. A guide for understanding your teen body

[@sirisoj]

lol

[@neilarellano8470]

🤣😂

[@bearcb]

😂😂😂😂

[@mitchellyoung8561]

LOL, belly LOL.

[@rodericktimmerman9779]

When I need inspiration: this video. Just can't explain why.

[@grassyclimer6853]

agreed

[@dennisritchie149]

It's cuz I'm 300% nigga.

[@marcussmithwick6326]

RIP Dennis Ritchie :'(

[@allencrider]

Follow the path of Al. Reverend Al.

[@JDKMM7]

@gespilk HOW

[@NotCarpeDM]

"Welcome to Bell Labs, here is your blue sweater."

[@mudkatt2003]

yellow sweaters for the ladies!

[@larrygall5831]

LOL. "C is a *very high level* language.." It gives you an idea of what it was like back then. To them, low level was binary and assembly was "high level."

[@VideoNOLA]

Actually, BASIC was well established by then, as was ADA (for nearly 20 years!)...now /there's/ some high-level ... even machine-agnostic ... languages for you!

[@glyphimor]

@@VideoNOLA ? This video is dated 1982; Ada was first released in 1983.

[@VideoNOLA]

@@glyphimor Actually, ADA began development in 1977, with first major release in 1980. But the language I meant to mention was Pascal, over 20 years old by the time of this film.

[@iLiokardo]

"It's a very nice high level language"

[@BYMYSYD]

But C IS a very high level language.

[@xxxmohxxxful]

Brian W. Kernighan is amazing

[@Cypeq]

These videos are gold. Come from a different place in time and mindset, so much more informative and also easy to understand then goop we usually find made today.

[@douggale5962]

It is amazing to listen to the precision with which they explain things. I love the technical accuracy of this video, everything seems to be so carefully worded to be completely correct and unambiguous.

[@sweetberries4611]

Unix, C, Bourne shell. You couldn't see most of things without it

[@perrybrown4985]

I was studying at UNSW in the late 70's, with John Lions teaching the OS course. You have to appreciate how cumbersome and obstructive the computing systems of the time were. (BK created systems like RATFOR and its associated software tools to help make these awful environments somewhat bearable) In those times, UNIX was a crusade and its acolytes faced huge resistance from those who were invested in large mainframe systems. At UNSW at the time, there were a bunch of PDP11/40's scattered about the place, functioning as card reading, print spooling I/O concentrators for the campus CDC Cyber mainframe. Somebody read the ACM UNIX paper and wrote away (no eMail!) to get the offered system on magtape. UNIX at first was run as an experiment on the CompSci's PDP11 out of hours and was totally unapproved. A few pioneers created a system, drivers etc. to allow these little UNIX machines to support users whilst still fulfilling their primary role of being batch terminals for the CDC mainframe. This was the point at which UNIX began to spread throughout the campus and John Lions created his operating system course and associated source code books. It is hard to appreciate how awful computing was before that point and how much the computing world changed in that short time due to those few determined individuals.

[@jojoanggono3229]

I am your junior Sir. It was in 1990s, Unix, Motorola 68k, Ansi C, 56kbps dial up modem. After graduating I went on to be sysadmin for IBM AS400 in insurance sector.

[@onefortyfour3]

holy, getting taught by John Lions himself. His legacy lives on at the garden in front of the CS building. Im gonna take OS next yr at UNSW as well.

[@perrybrown4985]

@@onefortyfour3 I took my daughter to the UNSW open day last year. The campus has changed a lot and the CS department is now a school? and has its own building (back then, it was a department within EE on the third floor of the EE building). We did eat lunch in JL's graden 🙂. The only person remaining from my days was Claude, who was a PhD student/tutor at the time (I got a "thankyou" in his thesis back then).

[@shinigamilee5915]

I was a little kid back then and I can remember seeing these computers when I would go with my Dad to work. I remember these things being so heavy and cumbersome I could hardly see their value back then. I never would have imagined I would end up in the same field.

[@notmychairnotmyproblem]

Same. My mom had a black and white computer that ran on MS/DOS. And as a child I never saw the point of a computer because I thought they were boring. Boy if younger me could see me now.

[@kristiyanivanov7414]

I'm younger than you guys, my first computer had 1.6 ghz amd (athlon I think?) cpu and 2 gb of ram, a cd/dvd drive and I loved to play cs1.6 and other (mostly browser) games on it. :D I'm thinking about pursuing a career in computer science or something close, not sure yet.

[@notmychairnotmyproblem]

@@kristiyanivanov7414 go for it! Computing really is an infinite field that will always be profitable. At least for the foreseeable future.

[@mardus_ee]

​@@kristiyanivanov7414 You'll need to be good in several things to get to computer science: mathematics, a very good command of English, and avoidance of dust. Disks and diskettes should be well-enclosed and kept out of sunlight. Also, keep magnets away from all gadgets, including fridge magnets and any toys with magnets.

[@SlaughterDog]

"...and Good things come from Bell Labs" -Dr. Bailey, my college programming instructor. Everyone in class was using Windows, except for me on Ubuntu and Dr. Bailey himself on Mac. When the C++ textbook's example output didn't match anyone's except mine and his, he said "and this is what we call Redmond standards". I learned the most important things from him.

[@nobytes2]

Strange the teacher did not get the class setup on Linux virtualbox.

[@b3ans4eva]

Constructive Bytes, when I tried to learn C++ at school, we SSH’d into a Linux server to do our programming. They were all named after Lord of the Rings.

[@hectorcanizales5900]

@@b3ans4eva nice

[@pflaffik]

@@b3ans4eva Vedry common naming scheme, and so many similar schemes. In Scandinavia lots of servers are named Thor, Loke, Frey, Odin, Sleipnir.

[@hellowill]

Yeah sad. In my class like 3/80 people used Linux. The rest Mac or windows.

[@carlfarrington]

I really enjoyed that. RIP Dennis.

[@anthonystramaglia342]

I worked for Eric Belove's production company (who produced this video) for a brief time in the early 90's and remember pulling this video from their library and being completely blown away. I got hired for a multimedia kiosk production for a couple of brand new technologies, Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) and Frame Relay, The production team took us to Bell Labs Holmdel where I got to work with some amazing engineers and developers. 3B2's and 5ESS everywhere, it was veritable tech playground.

[@garryvee]

After nearly 40 years of Unix/Linux software development, it is just awesome to see the people on whose shoulders I have stood. Excellent video.

[@chawlagrv]

the animation at the end was dope

[@leodu561]

I was fascinated in class about all those automaton theories and graph algorithm where other students who just want a programming job was indifferent about. The first time I watch this video, seeing all my heroes in the computing history: Kernighan, Ritchie, Aho, Thompson etc. I am rendered utterly stunned, amazed and speechless. This is truly an important step in the human history, where men's fascination of machine is really coming to fruition. And in such times I always remind myself of Turing's quote: "We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see that much remains to be done".

[@エルフェンリート-l3i]

Finally someone who feels the same like I do ! :D

[@TurpInTexas]

I've been a computer nerd since DOS 2.0, learned C using Kernighan's and Ritchie's book, played with various versions of UNIX over the years, knew how to do a lot of the things about Unix using pipes Kernighan explained but never understood until now THAT was supposed to be the strength and fundamental concept of UNIX. That it was a repository of lots of simple building blocks that could be used with the pipes to perform many kinds of tasks, instead of creating programs with all the functionality rolled into one massive program. Dang! I am such an idiot! How did I miss that concept all these years? I knew it could do it, but couldn't see the trees for the forest! Anyhow, maybe I didn't completely, I write a lot of programs for MS based systems, and frequently make calls to the system (via .dll, .ocx, .exe, etc.) to handle specialized functions so I don't have to mess with the code, and speed things up. Thanks for posting this video! It was like walking into the sunlight for the very first time! [re-edited today for clarity since I neglected to proofread before posting my idiot epiphany. Sorry folks. ]

[@ksaikiranr5]

why do you look like the better version of gaben

[@randomrfkov]

Unix Philosophy. Do one thing and do it good.

[@mendodave]

The Pipes really cleared up a lot of things for me too.

[@mardus_ee]

wrt spelling mistakes, I thought to cheekily recommend the exact routine demonstrated by Brian W. Kernighan at 5:58 (his whole segment starts at 4:09), where he so effortlessly shows the usefulness of UNIX pipes. Web browsers and modern smartphones have built-in spell-checking, and some desktop operating systems even include system-level word prediction. I haven't used Linux for years now, so cannot tell if this feature is also available in X, GNOME, or KDE.

[@jessevalenzuela7071]

Hey no more calling yourself an idiot the brain has ears of its own!

[@sam4bytes406]

it's incredible how we take things for granted but this makes us realize how complex our systems are

[@garveziukas]

Gotta love how many of those concepts and commands are still very much relevant and in use today in the same exact way

[@ccp_fact_checker]

exactly, things have not changed that much other than we used to code to the chipset f to stop wasting clock cycles, now they throw millions of lines/libraries in code from anywhere on the internet, and wonder why we need big cyber security teams.

[@victor753]

This video is fantastic! It is astonishing to be able to see and hear them talking about Unix so many years later and realizing that things haven't changed that much. They solved an incredibly complex problem (what they call the programming environment) in such a brilliant and complete way that their solution has survived to this date. It is so cool to see so many distinguished computing world personalities in one place. Kudos to the people who produced this video and whomever shared it with the rest of the world! :)

[@ravisriram6746]

I recall taking a class on SGI's Irix OS, years ago: going from a GUI interface to learning the command-line was challenging and exhilarating. It was a truly unforgettable experience.

[@qualiauniverse638]

I started studying programming with their book The C Programming Language. Never seen their face!

[@shutdown-r]

Brian Kernighan has such a soothing voice

[@EricBCalhoun]

Because comparatively he doesn’t sound like a robot 😂

[@Jeff_Seely]

Ken Thompson and Dennis Richie are two of the most profound computer icons or pioneers that I can possibly think of. Day after day for most of the day my time is spent in a programming language fathered by Dennis Ritchie and that is the c language. Dennis, may God rest his soul, was an absolute uncontested genius. I really enjoyed this documentary.

[@b0r1sus]

Be ready! 2020 - 50th anniversary of Unix Epoch! Half Century!

[@kristiyanivanov7414]

b0r1sus hbd unix

[@michaelutech4786]

2021

[@the_real_vdegenne]

I am using Fedora and Gnome, it's amazing to think the building blocks of my system are the ones designed by these people more than 30 years ago, and I am still using the shell, the pipes and the original unix programs to make my development processes easier.

[@nicolareiman9687]

if u wanna use the real original programs use FreeBSD or any other BSD descendants. and if u wanna get rid of UNIX mistakes use plan9(designed by these people). Linux is very complex.

[@uriituw]

Fedora is not Unix.

[@the_real_vdegenne]

@@uriituw oh here comes the smarty pants... humans are not a direct descendant of primates but yet we share a common ancestor and we have a lot of similarities. That's the point smarty pants.

[@gbushster]

I like the way these people speak. There is no show off, shrill or bragging. Thank you for all the work you have done!

[@stargazer7644]

The systemd programmers need to watch this over and over.

[@jobymanuel6447]

Star Gazer please send me 1000 billion dollars

[@L0j1k]

But systemd was never about improving the ecosystem. It was about wedging Red Hat's shitty business model between the kernel and userland. It became obvious after the whole thing with cgroups2.

[@hunterhancock474]

@@user-ke6gn8pg3u I use gentoo btw :^)

[@zantetsu8674]

SO VERY TRUE!

[@user-ke6gn8pg3u]

@suny123boy1 Windows takes about 25 GUI clicks to do anything ;)

[@stanleygsf]

10:53 It's my first time seeing Alfred Aho in person. I've only seen him as a popular name on the covers of books about compilers.

[@DalasYoo]

Graph partitioning, column signals; circuit design rule checking. Very complex to simple program Such a brilliant people

[@1977doctorno]

THX a lot to AT&T for providing these historical interestings vids!

[@jesuschristsuperczar1224]

I feel like I'm sitting in class learning Solaris over 20 years ago. It's funny 'cuz this video already had some years on it then but AT&T UNIX is so elegant that people could source this video for many more decades to come as they learn the core of computer software.

[@eliasab1998]

One of the best videos ever suggested to me. Thank you, KZbin suggestion algorithm!

[@davidcolantuono3622]

I never worked for AT&T, but my dad used to work there. Once in a while, especially on Christmas Eve, he used to bring me with him to his work for a few hours. It wasn't much actual work. It was mostly my dad hanging out with his friends and fellow employees. I remember the cubicles where the employees worked. I remember the buffet in the cafeteria and even on the long table not far from the cubicles. I remember exploring the old AT&T office building and even discovered a vending machine. Too bad that I didn't have any change or I would have picked a candy bar or snack from it. This was mainly during the 1980s, though likely later than 1982. My guess is between 1986 and 1989.

[@SamSalhi]

Beautiful! So little has changed since then in this great work of software! We can still trace roots of modern day everything here! Fantastic!

[@jakethewoz]

Those keyboards are so beautiful

[@AgentSmith911]

This 40 year old video is still very relevant 👍🏻

[@PigOnAUnicycle]

Super-cool to hear them lay out how features we now take for granted made UNIX more productive than competing OSs

[@Semion7777]

Aight people, do you realize how much precious this video is? Goddammit, this is gold! Pure gold! I hope that after this magical vid I will make another closer step to grasp the programming in its true form and not this coding stuff.

[@MonsieurMosca]

You can see Kernighan struggling for a one-word definition at 15:34, as a rare glimpse of the times before the term “shell scripting” was invented.

[@Taras-Nabad]

Great video. Brian K, Ken T., Dennis Ritchie, and David Cutler are a few guys we owe a lot to. So much time and energy is focused on the success of Linux (and rightfully so) but these guys are slowly being forgotten.

[@jvenegas8868]

I'm completely obsessed with the graphics in this video and especially the graphics and music at the end. Wish real life were like that

[@kristiyanivanov7414]

J Venegas same ngl.

[@KevinBeee]

It's amazing and humbling to see just how primitive this system was compared to my modern ZSH Linux terminal. And then to remember that these guys must have thought the exact same thing about the UNIX of the early 80s compared to the punch card programming of the late 60s/early 70s. Holy crap have we come a long way in only 50 years.

[@iamprasad88]

You can tell that most people talking in this video are not used to talking to a camera or other people. Somehow most brilliant computer scientists have the same issue.

[@kristiyanivanov7414]

iamprasad88 they are not too bad tho

[@elgeneralxx]

its autism or some sort of social issue

[@kristiyanivanov7414]

nothing wrong with that tho

[@VivaLaRazsa]

I would love to see people try to explain technical stuff on video without sounding like a massive nerd

[@skejeton]

​@@VivaLaRazsa they don't seem to use any complex words, kernighan used casual language to explain shell pipes

[@fayezalle43]

Imagine programming in this era. No google, no stackoverflow. You must truly understand and have deep knowledge.

[@Tyler-fm4ix]

Thanks for recommending this KZbin

[@Josh350]

Sad to say, many of these issues that they talk about still exist today. I'm a 90's kid, but watching these videos have given me more insight on what plagues the world of computing. We've come a long way, but there will always be room for improvement.

[@matthewJ142]

It's still a learning process. There is never enough knowledge that can be attained. If it stops, your God and already a cosmic force of nature that can no longer be human

[@riefqikml]

Thanks to whoever watched this video and caused the algorithm to recommend it to me.

[@slayerofapples1146]

This video is the best introduction to Linux ever.

[@ErnestoStaccolanana]

unix man... UNIX

[@ErnestoStaccolanana]

@hunter0one and so what? there are tons of unix-like systems out there... linux is just one kernel family, and not even my favorite unix-like kernel

[@yuricherkasov]

Unix does not exist as a software anymore. There are many POSIX-compliant systems instead. Linux with hundreds of distros, BSD-kernel systems, including Mac OS, proprietary POSIX systems like Solaris.

[@Krush206]

@@yuricherkasov What are you talking about? macOS is a certified UNIX system. And there are a couple of its branches still alive: SCO OpenServer, UnixWare, AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, illumos and (probably) TRS-XENIX

[@ErnestoStaccolanana]

@@Krush206 exactly. moreover linux hasn't been posix compliant for years, and a lot of popular UNIX-LIKE systems are not posix compliant still today. the term is unix-like and there's no problem with it

[@r3fre5h_iwnl]

this is amazing, more people need to see this!

[@ccp_fact_checker]

Linus stood on the shoulders of champions - I still preferred SCO Open Server to Linux back in the day for x86 kit, I am OK with RHEL now.

[@808hawk]

just Ken, Den & Brian getting through another day. Epic!

[@ccp_fact_checker]

Thank you, AT&T Tech Channel for sharing this. I stopped programming when C++ became a thing, I was happy with assembler and C and still use C, but mainly do everything in the shell now. I also used to like the PRIMOS (Prime Computers) which was my first Operating system and a great step to Unix but using Fortran 77 as the programming language. The OS as I thought it had similar ways of working, maybe my memory is fading on that one. I think I can remember getting our source code for Unix on a Reel-Reel tape and needing to use a ICL 1900 mainframe to transfer it to a QIC tape ( I cannot remember how this was achieved ) . Brings back memories of Wire wrap bread boards and NCR Chip core processor in the middle running at low Mhz (if that). Just found one of my rejected punch card COBOL statements in a 1972 book called, "Computer Programming made simple". I must have used the punch card as a bookmark when programming the ICL 1900 - to use the consol was a pay-by-the-hour event in those days ( unless you were the operator and played dice ). If I can remember correctly when compiling the source code to port Unix to the NCR chipset there were references to the Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy in it - AT&T boffs can you remember this? I forgot about yacc as mentioned in the video, can remember only using ed, ex and never really wanting to go to the new world of vi for some strange reason even though I see vi was developed a long time ago. I also had an ICL PERQ at home when I lived in the UK, which was my 1st home computer - A great graphics computer, but Floppy drives were really floppy drives @ 8 inch and the Hard disks were big. This has really brought back memories of when going to the Unix User shows you knew everyone - most had a beard, then the Unix wars. Now it's all settled there are too many Unixes/Linux variants and Oracle killed the best company - Sun MicroSystems and Solaris (Fujitsu would have been a better company), just like IBM bought the best OLTP database Informix and no one really wanted to partner with them because they knew they wanted everyone to go to DB2. I think I spent more time over the years with the SCO Open Server operating system, hated AIX/HP UX but had to use them for years, best OS: Solaris. I must admit I do like what Microsoft has done with Unix Services to Windows and transitioned to WSL - I like running Kali under WSL and still do all my text manipulation, Excel CSV spreadsheet creation (Still do not like VLOOKUP), networking, etc with Kali as it is so much easier to analyze text. It also allows me to use one server using Powershell voice commands when doing network intrusion alerts, disk alerts, etc. - Never worked out how to do speech-to-text in the Linux command line (Lazy old Programmer) All this has brought so many memories back like when Hugo Cornwall's "The Hackers Handbook" came out, I still have my Panosonic tone dialer from those days - Who would have thought I work in Cyber security now!!

[@BorisBorozan]

Zx CA

[@glaucorocha1281]

This video is pure pedagogical gold. It is so simple, yet so inspiring, so well explained and so entertaining. And, wow, I would love to live in an era where the fashion status-quo was turtlenecks with jackets and big-framed eyeglasses. In my mind, it works like "fashion | computingzeitgeist" which returns "AWESOME" (the specific integer value must be defined somewhere in the 70s.h file).

[@mardus_ee]

From the viewpoint of how Brian Kernighan looks, it's not even too outdated. It would only be outdated, if he were to stand up, and if the jumper was tucked into his jeans.

[@testplmnb]

Man, this video is extremely good in terms of explainings how functions were developed.

[@JoshuaSalazarMejia]

16:46 Actually, the rendering of the plot of that old CRT screen looked preety MATRIX like. Beautiful to see that working decades ago! :O

[@BurninRevolver]

19:23 "C is a very nice high level language", words I never thought I will hear

[@jessstuart7495]

It's high level compared with writing things in assembly language, where you need to know how to use specific processor instructions.

[@BurninRevolver]

@ReaktorLeak c is by no means a high level languages in today standars. It is high level compared only to assembly, but programmers nowadays are used to a total different meaning of high level, and above all C is the the lowest-level of all general-purpose, architecture-independent programming language

[@steffennilsen2132]

Compared to what was before, it really is. There's a reason why most modern programming languages uses c style syntax

[@_________________404]

It's "high level" by definition. Low level language is something that interacts directly with the specific hardware architecture, C doesn't do that as it uses the compiler to be architecture independent.

[@klc3rd]

I love that so many years later and this video is still a relevant explanation of modern Unix based systems. If I was new to Linux/bsd this video would be very enlightening.

[@adamploof3528]

I realize this is partly available to watch for it's nostalgic and camp-y qualities, but I actually found some useful stuff to be learned from this. Also, for anyone who's ever read the --help documentation on many shell utilities, it's hard not to notice how many of them were written at Bell labs. Pretty cool to have a look into what that era was all about.