5 ms·

Just for fun, here's the famous pic of Gates and Allen using what looks like a Teletype Model 33 [1], and of course Ritchie and Thompson in front of a PDP-11 [2

Just for fun, here's the famous pic of Gates and Allen using what looks like a Teletype Model 33 [1], and of course Ritchie and Thompson in front of a PDP-11 [2]. For years (decades!) I never understood the purpose of line editors and why VI was such an improvement. Until one day I saw the pic of Gates and Allen and suddenly realized why, and how it worked. You already had a printout of your code (or text) in front of you. If you wanted to edit the text, you used a line editor to rewrite the line it was on. After a while you could print the whole thing again if you needed. And this is why my TRS-80's BASIC editor worked the same way. It was just like the original time-share version from Dartmouth ported to a microcomputer. 1. https://www.charterworld.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Paul-Allen-with-Bill-Gates-in-front-of-a-teletype-machine-at-the-Lakeside-School-in-1970.-Courtesy-Lakeside-School.jpg https://www.charterworld.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2018/10... 2. http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/teletype/ken-and-den.html http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/teletype/ken-and...

daveevad 3y ago
That's the first time seeing that Gates photo for me. He would've been 14 or 15 years old.
- russellbeattie 3y ago
  Gates actually wrote about the photo in a blog post he wrote after Allen passed away. [1] > The first time I saw how passionate Paul could get about something, I was in 8th grade. This picture might make you think he was my teacher, but he was actually a sophomore, just a little less than three years older than me. > This teletype is the thing that brought us together. Our school, Lakeside, held a rummage sale and used the proceeds to buy a teletype terminal. We were obsessed with it. The problem was, it was really expensive to use – 40 dollars an hour! The only way for us to get computer time was by exploiting a bug in the system. 1. https://www.gatesnotes.com/Forbes-Philanthropy-Summit-honors-Paul-Allen https://www.gatesnotes.com/Forbes-Philanthropy-Summit-honors...
eru 3y ago
> If you wanted to edit the text, you used a line editor to rewrite the line it was on. After a while you could print the whole thing again if you needed. That's probably also part of why when you used line numbers in early BASIC, you left plenty of numerical gaps, so you didn't have to re-print as often.
- gattilorenz 3y ago
  I assume it’s also because reusing a line number means losing whatever code was previously there, and if you find a bug and need to add extra code you don’t want to rewrite part of what is correct just to add a few instructions in between, whether on a teletype or on a terminal with a screen.
  - kryptiskt 3y ago
    It wasn't that bad, you could renumber programs with a single command if you got stuck with no room to insert a line.
    - thristian 3y ago
      The BASIC I grew up with (Applesoft Basic) didn't have a built-in command to renumber a program, but it did have a helper tool you could run from disk. Unfortunately, it only updated the number of each line - it didn't update the line number references in commands like GOTO or GOSUB, so it was pretty much useless for any program large enough that you might want to automate renumbering.
zokier 3y ago
On line-editors, it is bit funny that even the most hard-core cli enthusiastics draw the line there and use some sort of visual editor despite line editors being more pure cli thing. Has anyone seen anyone do any non-trivial coding or other work with line-editors? I imagine that the code editing experience for blind people might be somewhat comparable to using line-editors? Although especially with hard copy terminals you don't need to keep everything in your head
- varjag 3y ago
  If you programmed BASIC (or for that matter other languages) on micros in 1980s, line editors were prevalent.
  - quickthrower2 3y ago
    The bbcbasic list, ren, auto commands and copy key were very beginner friendly line editors. Super easy to grok.
- anthk 3y ago
  Unix and ed for sure, before they wrote ex and vi.
- mastax 3y ago
  I remember a post on here a while ago arguing for using ed. I think it was mostly about scripting contexts and batch processing, not interactive editing.
  - rwmj 3y ago
    I use 'sed' most days.
- xorcist 3y ago
  I doubt many "hard-core cli enthusiasts" desire some sort of digital self flagellation, but instead strive for efficiency. Full screen editors are efficient, and was very quickly adopted when made available. Line editors prevailed for a long time, not because of user preferences but because they were tiny and was shipped by default. In PC-DOS/MS-DOS edlin.com/exe was what was available until the full screen editor edit.exe shipped some years into the 90s. Almost all home computers came with a variant of BASIC in ROM, which also used line editing (not even with a proper editor but by substitution of whole lines).
iiooiiooikk 3y ago
Note to anyone with HTTPS-only mode enabled in their browser: that second link won't work because it's only served over HTTP and not the HTTPS link it is replaced by. Here's an archive link instead: https://web.archive.org/web/20240226112837/http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/teletype/ken-and-den.html https://web.archive.org/web/20240226112837/http://www.columb...

daveevad 3y ago

That's the first time seeing that Gates photo for me. He would've been 14 or 15 years old.

russellbeattie 3y ago
Gates actually wrote about the photo in a blog post he wrote after Allen passed away. [1] > The first time I saw how passionate Paul could get about something, I was in 8th grade. This picture might make you think he was my teacher, but he was actually a sophomore, just a little less than three years older than me. > This teletype is the thing that brought us together. Our school, Lakeside, held a rummage sale and used the proceeds to buy a teletype terminal. We were obsessed with it. The problem was, it was really expensive to use – 40 dollars an hour! The only way for us to get computer time was by exploiting a bug in the system. 1. https://www.gatesnotes.com/Forbes-Philanthropy-Summit-honors-Paul-Allen https://www.gatesnotes.com/Forbes-Philanthropy-Summit-honors...

eru 3y ago

> If you wanted to edit the text, you used a line editor to rewrite the line it was on. After a while you could print the whole thing again if you needed. That's probably also part of why when you used line numbers in early BASIC, you left plenty of numerical gaps, so you didn't have to re-print as often.

gattilorenz 3y ago
I assume it’s also because reusing a line number means losing whatever code was previously there, and if you find a bug and need to add extra code you don’t want to rewrite part of what is correct just to add a few instructions in between, whether on a teletype or on a terminal with a screen.
- kryptiskt 3y ago
  It wasn't that bad, you could renumber programs with a single command if you got stuck with no room to insert a line.
  - thristian 3y ago
    The BASIC I grew up with (Applesoft Basic) didn't have a built-in command to renumber a program, but it did have a helper tool you could run from disk. Unfortunately, it only updated the number of each line - it didn't update the line number references in commands like GOTO or GOSUB, so it was pretty much useless for any program large enough that you might want to automate renumbering.

zokier 3y ago

On line-editors, it is bit funny that even the most hard-core cli enthusiastics draw the line there and use some sort of visual editor despite line editors being more pure cli thing. Has anyone seen anyone do any non-trivial coding or other work with line-editors? I imagine that the code editing experience for blind people might be somewhat comparable to using line-editors? Although especially with hard copy terminals you don't need to keep everything in your head

varjag 3y ago
If you programmed BASIC (or for that matter other languages) on micros in 1980s, line editors were prevalent.
- quickthrower2 3y ago
  The bbcbasic list, ren, auto commands and copy key were very beginner friendly line editors. Super easy to grok.
anthk 3y ago
Unix and ed for sure, before they wrote ex and vi.
mastax 3y ago
I remember a post on here a while ago arguing for using ed. I think it was mostly about scripting contexts and batch processing, not interactive editing.
- rwmj 3y ago
  I use 'sed' most days.
xorcist 3y ago
I doubt many "hard-core cli enthusiasts" desire some sort of digital self flagellation, but instead strive for efficiency. Full screen editors are efficient, and was very quickly adopted when made available. Line editors prevailed for a long time, not because of user preferences but because they were tiny and was shipped by default. In PC-DOS/MS-DOS edlin.com/exe was what was available until the full screen editor edit.exe shipped some years into the 90s. Almost all home computers came with a variant of BASIC in ROM, which also used line editing (not even with a proper editor but by substitution of whole lines).

iiooiiooikk 3y ago

Note to anyone with HTTPS-only mode enabled in their browser: that second link won't work because it's only served over HTTP and not the HTTPS link it is replaced by. Here's an archive link instead: https://web.archive.org/web/20240226112837/http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/teletype/ken-and-den.html https://web.archive.org/web/20240226112837/http://www.columb...