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The author's amazement at the oblique reference to teletype outputs is hilarious. Kids these days forget that much of Unix (and most other things) were created
by breadbox 11y ago
The author's amazement at the oblique reference to teletype outputs is hilarious. Kids these days forget that much of Unix (and most other things) were created without the benefit of "glass teletypes" (aka screens).
- Demiurge 11y agoKids? You can be over 30 and never have used a teleprinter :)
- breadbox 11y agoAs always, "kids" == younger than me. But no, I've never used a teleprinter for anything serious. Still, the evidence of their recent departure is all around us. vi (short for "visual", because the idea of a visual editor was still pretty novel) didn't even exist until 1976.
- rnovak 11y agoBut I hope you wouldn't be amazed that a book written in 1978 made reference to common technology at the time. The whole point of this post was the original K&R C, so why wouldn't they reference/assume teletypes?
- TazeTSchnitzel 11y agoOverstriking with backspace is something I actually used recently: https://github.com/TazeTSchnitzel/BBCode630 https://github.com/TazeTSchnitzel/BBCode630 (to compensate for the limitations of a budget 80's printer)
- gopowerranger 11y agoI was going to make a "kids these days" remark after looking at that article, too.
- derefr 11y agoIIRC, "backspace" as an overstrike compose character continued to be supported for quite a while after the death of teleprinters. Some BBSes depended on it, for example.