4 ms·

I'll throw out a reference to the Burroughs "large systems" line: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_large_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_

I'll throw out a reference to the Burroughs "large systems" line: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_large_systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_large_systems These are the lineage of machines Knuth implemented his famous ALGOL-60 compiler on. There's a nice video about the B6500 that was discussed on HN years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7880027 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7880027 I did some work adjacent to a UNISYS ClearPath "A Series" machine and later a PC-based version back in the early 2000s. Watching the operators and field service technicians working on it I got a feeling of a very mature environment. (Not necessarily fun to use by the look of it.) I got a bit of an IBM AS/400 feeling watching users interact with it in terminal emulation. For somebody with a Unix and MS-DOS background it just seemed odd. After that contract was up I mostly forgot about it. I heard a talk where Alan Kay referred to some old Burroughs system. I got to reading about Burroughs and learned UNISYS was a successor. That led down a rabbit hole that ended up at these B5000-descended machines. It looks like it was a well thought-out architecture that persists today (albeit in software, rather than hardware). The operating system, MCP, is still under development.

rbanffy 5y ago
> The operating system, MCP, is still under development. MCP is, by far, the most user hostile OS I've ever seen. It's no surprise Bonnie McBird, who wrote Tron's screenplay and is Kay's wife, used it as the name of the villain.
- cmrdporcupine 5y ago
  Holy crap, I had no idea that the screenwriter for Tron was connected to Alan Kay. Thanks for that tidbit. Sounds like she became romantically connected to him after meeting him while researching the movie. Neat. I'd love to see her original script before it got ruined. Sounds like her and Kay were pretty bitter about it. https://web.archive.org/web/20030109182549/http://www.tron-sector.com/Articles/article.asp?ID=13 https://web.archive.org/web/20030109182549/http://www.tron-s...
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    I’m not sure I’d like her take. I don’t like too much the movie either. I’d like the programs to be more alien, more funhouse mirror images of their creators, and be portrayed as AÍ semi-autonomous agents. But that’d be a lot to demand on that age. They already had artificial life for their credits and that’s impressively prescient.
- spiritplumber 5y ago
  ... That is officially awesome. End of line.
- mrandish 5y ago
  There were a few other possible tie-ins. The word TRON itself was a command in several MSFT Basic interpreters of the 8 bit era. It was short for TRACE ON and its companion for TRACE Off was TROFF. They shortened strings because space was limited in the 8K ROM. Good times...
  - contingencies 5y ago
    Spell create with an 'e'. - Ken Thompson (referring to design regrets on the UNIX creat(2) system call and the fallacy of premature optimization) ... with respect for constrained environments, by way of contrast, via https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup

rbanffy 5y ago

> The operating system, MCP, is still under development. MCP is, by far, the most user hostile OS I've ever seen. It's no surprise Bonnie McBird, who wrote Tron's screenplay and is Kay's wife, used it as the name of the villain.

cmrdporcupine 5y ago
Holy crap, I had no idea that the screenwriter for Tron was connected to Alan Kay. Thanks for that tidbit. Sounds like she became romantically connected to him after meeting him while researching the movie. Neat. I'd love to see her original script before it got ruined. Sounds like her and Kay were pretty bitter about it. https://web.archive.org/web/20030109182549/http://www.tron-sector.com/Articles/article.asp?ID=13 https://web.archive.org/web/20030109182549/http://www.tron-s...
- rbanffy 5y ago
  I’m not sure I’d like her take. I don’t like too much the movie either. I’d like the programs to be more alien, more funhouse mirror images of their creators, and be portrayed as AÍ semi-autonomous agents. But that’d be a lot to demand on that age. They already had artificial life for their credits and that’s impressively prescient.
spiritplumber 5y ago
... That is officially awesome. End of line.
mrandish 5y ago
There were a few other possible tie-ins. The word TRON itself was a command in several MSFT Basic interpreters of the 8 bit era. It was short for TRACE ON and its companion for TRACE Off was TROFF. They shortened strings because space was limited in the 8K ROM. Good times...
- contingencies 5y ago
  Spell create with an 'e'. - Ken Thompson (referring to design regrets on the UNIX creat(2) system call and the fallacy of premature optimization) ... with respect for constrained environments, by way of contrast, via https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup https://github.com/globalcitizen/taoup