8 ms·

“It's easier to port a shell than a shell script” (1998)

92 points by beshrkayali 11y ago

nickpsecurity 11y ago
I wish I saw that. That would've been epic.
readme 11y ago
And then microsoft's feelings were hurt so badly that one day they decided to write powershell.
- _Ogre 11y ago
  Somehow I doubt it took them more than 8 years to write Powershell.
  - steve-howard 11y ago
    Maybe not, but it does take me 8 hours to get a Powershell script right.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
rawdisk 11y ago
I thought this was quite amusing when I read it back in the late 90's. At one point their proposed shell was called "Monad". I wondered "Why do they want to do this?" I have gone to a number of conferences with MS employees over the years, especially MS lawyers, and with respect to software, they often seem like they have been indoctrinated into a cult. As if the existence of software outside of MS Windows does not exist and as if MS holds the key to solving all problems. But MS does not offer solutions. They create problems (e.g., for anyone who has to deal with their licensing) and then offer "solutions" to the problems they created. It is like someone who proposes to "simplify" something by introducing more complexity. The idea of MS embracing a proper shell seemed laughable to me. Windows users expect pointing and clicking (and today they want to be able to touch the screen). Now fast forward to 2015 and it seems like PowerShell has a significant number of users. I am sure it is helping Windows users greatly. Good for them. But I still think it is laughable. The name still makes me laugh. I'd rather use something like Back Orifice (which has a simple UNIX client) to control Windows from a proper shell on a computer running UNIX. Or SSH via Cygwin. Or even SUA which has ksh and tcsh. Alas no simple Bourne shell (better for writing portable scripts).
- malkia 11y ago
  Rumor has it, that a somewhat big bank, somewhere in Europe used batch files to drive it's business back in the day...
  - Natsu 11y ago
    There was once a time when I as a junior employee was left to create a backup system out of shared drives on the Novell server, XCOPY and AUTOEXEC.BAT. It worked better than one might expect. You'd get emails about failed backups (backup flag files removed after a successful backup), backups were versioned, and restore was quick & easy (execute a simple script from the shared drive, then sys c: from a boot disk).
- dkarapetyan 11y ago
  You should try powershell. It's actually pretty good and is much better than unix shells.
  - KnightHawk3 11y ago
    It's petty but I can't get over the case sensitive command names with capital letters in it. They are honestly too long.
    - oblio 11y ago
      It has aliases for 90% of those commands, though.
    - AndrewGaspar 11y ago
      PowerShell is not case sensitive.
  - vezzy-fnord 11y ago
    It might be better than Bourne or C-derived shells, but I have a hard time conceding it beats for instance Inferno shell, es or rc.
fresleven 11y ago
Seeing a link to a gopher:// site and discovering that Safari in iOS still supports it made my day.
- blahedo 11y ago
  Alas, it's not a gopher:// link; gopher is just the name of the host. (Perhaps it also is a gopher server, or once was.)
  - lindner 11y ago
    It's running pygopherd http://gopher.quux.org:70/devel/gopher/pygopherd http://gopher.quux.org:70/devel/gopher/pygopherd
    - beshrkayali 11y ago
      Exactly, that's how I stumbled upon this. PyGopherd has a very nice feature that supports serving gopher and http on the same port...
- brisance 11y ago
  I might be missing something; isn't the machine named gopher but it is using HTTP to access it on port 70?
  - ChristianBundy 11y ago
    This is correct.
- beshrkayali 11y ago
  Unfortunately none of the current latest versions of top browse supports gopher afaik. Firefox dropped it at 3.6 (but still possible with OverbiteFF). Edit: here's the gopher link for it gopher://gopher.quux.org/0/Humor%20and%20Fun/Microsoft_KSH.txt|/MBOX-MESSAGE/1
S4M 11y ago
1998
vezzy-fnord 11y ago
Also covered by WikiWikiWeb: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?KornShellStory http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?KornShellStory
digi_owl 11y ago
So the title of this link is from the title of the email. That in turn is a quote from Larry Wall, who do not seem to be present in the story at all.
- beshrkayali 11y ago
  Well, I assumed that the point of the quote is that it's fitting for the story, mentioning Larry was for attribution (which I see got removed from the title, I don't mind but I think it should've stayed in there for credit)
  - digi_owl 11y ago
    Yeah, i just came expecting to see something about the issues of porting scripts between shells or something. especially as there has been a whole lot of pro/con shell scripts as of late.
kazinator 11y ago
I could have easily put Korn in his place if I had been that Microsoft person. Ah, but no; I would end up saying some things that would have been too ironic to come from a Microsoft person, such as: - why are you Unix people making a POSIX standard which covers the shell command language, if you're going to insist on one reference implementation being used on everyone? Just dump the source code listing of that into a document, add a few comments here and there, and call it the standard. - isn't it healthier to have multiple implementations rather than a "monoculture"? Do we all use the same C compiler? - the MKS shell could be made to diagnose and reject the use of Korn shell extensions, helping the programmer write a more portable script. - wait, did you say your name was Korn, or Bourne? I didn't quite hear you from the back. If you're Mr. Korn, I would appreciate it if Mr. Bourne would now stand up, if present, and ask you why you don't just use the shell with his name on it.
- Sir_Cmpwn 11y ago
  >why are you Unix people making a POSIX standard which covers the shell command language, if you're going to insist on one reference implementation being used on everyone? Just dump the source code listing of that into a document, add a few comments here and there, and call it the standard. Any shell that isn't compatible with the _reference_ implementation of that shell is flawed.
  - kazinator 11y ago
    The POSIX standard that came into effect in 1990 doesn't contain or assert any reference implementation. A reference implementation accompanying a document can be at odds with the specification. If a document says that a reference implementation shall be held correct if there is any discrepancy, then specification is greatly diminished in value. It's obviously just a best effort to describe the reference implementation, and not a forceful standard. What if a buffer overflow is discovered in the reference implementation? Everyone must have the same one to be compatible?
    - Sir_Cmpwn 11y ago
      Well, your comments are valid. To be fair, though, if Microsoft was truly aiming to be compatible, they'd implement POSIX and you could use whatever shell implementation you wanted to.

92 points by beshrkayali 11y ago

nickpsecurity 11y ago

I wish I saw that. That would've been epic.

readme 11y ago

And then microsoft's feelings were hurt so badly that one day they decided to write powershell.

_Ogre 11y ago
Somehow I doubt it took them more than 8 years to write Powershell.
- steve-howard 11y ago
  Maybe not, but it does take me 8 hours to get a Powershell script right.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]

rawdisk 11y ago

I thought this was quite amusing when I read it back in the late 90's. At one point their proposed shell was called "Monad". I wondered "Why do they want to do this?" I have gone to a number of conferences with MS employees over the years, especially MS lawyers, and with respect to software, they often seem like they have been indoctrinated into a cult. As if the existence of software outside of MS Windows does not exist and as if MS holds the key to solving all problems. But MS does not offer solutions. They create problems (e.g., for anyone who has to deal with their licensing) and then offer "solutions" to the problems they created. It is like someone who proposes to "simplify" something by introducing more complexity. The idea of MS embracing a proper shell seemed laughable to me. Windows users expect pointing and clicking (and today they want to be able to touch the screen). Now fast forward to 2015 and it seems like PowerShell has a significant number of users. I am sure it is helping Windows users greatly. Good for them. But I still think it is laughable. The name still makes me laugh. I'd rather use something like Back Orifice (which has a simple UNIX client) to control Windows from a proper shell on a computer running UNIX. Or SSH via Cygwin. Or even SUA which has ksh and tcsh. Alas no simple Bourne shell (better for writing portable scripts).

malkia 11y ago
Rumor has it, that a somewhat big bank, somewhere in Europe used batch files to drive it's business back in the day...
- Natsu 11y ago
  There was once a time when I as a junior employee was left to create a backup system out of shared drives on the Novell server, XCOPY and AUTOEXEC.BAT. It worked better than one might expect. You'd get emails about failed backups (backup flag files removed after a successful backup), backups were versioned, and restore was quick & easy (execute a simple script from the shared drive, then sys c: from a boot disk).
dkarapetyan 11y ago
You should try powershell. It's actually pretty good and is much better than unix shells.
- KnightHawk3 11y ago
  It's petty but I can't get over the case sensitive command names with capital letters in it. They are honestly too long.
  - oblio 11y ago
    It has aliases for 90% of those commands, though.
  - AndrewGaspar 11y ago
    PowerShell is not case sensitive.
- vezzy-fnord 11y ago
  It might be better than Bourne or C-derived shells, but I have a hard time conceding it beats for instance Inferno shell, es or rc.

fresleven 11y ago

Seeing a link to a gopher:// site and discovering that Safari in iOS still supports it made my day.

blahedo 11y ago
Alas, it's not a gopher:// link; gopher is just the name of the host. (Perhaps it also is a gopher server, or once was.)
- lindner 11y ago
  It's running pygopherd http://gopher.quux.org:70/devel/gopher/pygopherd http://gopher.quux.org:70/devel/gopher/pygopherd
  - beshrkayali 11y ago
    Exactly, that's how I stumbled upon this. PyGopherd has a very nice feature that supports serving gopher and http on the same port...
brisance 11y ago
I might be missing something; isn't the machine named gopher but it is using HTTP to access it on port 70?
- ChristianBundy 11y ago
  This is correct.
beshrkayali 11y ago
Unfortunately none of the current latest versions of top browse supports gopher afaik. Firefox dropped it at 3.6 (but still possible with OverbiteFF). Edit: here's the gopher link for it gopher://gopher.quux.org/0/Humor%20and%20Fun/Microsoft_KSH.txt|/MBOX-MESSAGE/1

S4M 11y ago

1998

vezzy-fnord 11y ago

Also covered by WikiWikiWeb: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?KornShellStory http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?KornShellStory

digi_owl 11y ago

So the title of this link is from the title of the email. That in turn is a quote from Larry Wall, who do not seem to be present in the story at all.

beshrkayali 11y ago
Well, I assumed that the point of the quote is that it's fitting for the story, mentioning Larry was for attribution (which I see got removed from the title, I don't mind but I think it should've stayed in there for credit)
- digi_owl 11y ago
  Yeah, i just came expecting to see something about the issues of porting scripts between shells or something. especially as there has been a whole lot of pro/con shell scripts as of late.

kazinator 11y ago

I could have easily put Korn in his place if I had been that Microsoft person. Ah, but no; I would end up saying some things that would have been too ironic to come from a Microsoft person, such as: - why are you Unix people making a POSIX standard which covers the shell command language, if you're going to insist on one reference implementation being used on everyone? Just dump the source code listing of that into a document, add a few comments here and there, and call it the standard. - isn't it healthier to have multiple implementations rather than a "monoculture"? Do we all use the same C compiler? - the MKS shell could be made to diagnose and reject the use of Korn shell extensions, helping the programmer write a more portable script. - wait, did you say your name was Korn, or Bourne? I didn't quite hear you from the back. If you're Mr. Korn, I would appreciate it if Mr. Bourne would now stand up, if present, and ask you why you don't just use the shell with his name on it.

Sir_Cmpwn 11y ago
>why are you Unix people making a POSIX standard which covers the shell command language, if you're going to insist on one reference implementation being used on everyone? Just dump the source code listing of that into a document, add a few comments here and there, and call it the standard. Any shell that isn't compatible with the _reference_ implementation of that shell is flawed.
- kazinator 11y ago
  The POSIX standard that came into effect in 1990 doesn't contain or assert any reference implementation. A reference implementation accompanying a document can be at odds with the specification. If a document says that a reference implementation shall be held correct if there is any discrepancy, then specification is greatly diminished in value. It's obviously just a best effort to describe the reference implementation, and not a forceful standard. What if a buffer overflow is discovered in the reference implementation? Everyone must have the same one to be compatible?
  - Sir_Cmpwn 11y ago
    Well, your comments are valid. To be fair, though, if Microsoft was truly aiming to be compatible, they'd implement POSIX and you could use whatever shell implementation you wanted to.