Jargon file v2.1.5 28 NOV 1990 -- part 5 of 6

[Piercarlo Grandi]

On 30 Nov 90 17:25:12 GMT, smith at sctc.com (Rick Smith) said:

smith> A Unix hacker can't sneer at Multics. It's like sneering at your
smith> grandad.  Sure he's a doddering wreck, but he created some pretty
smith> fine stuff that we can still be proud of. You, for example.

If only! A very good argument can be made that Multics is a descendant
of Unix! You can consider Multics the grandchild of Unix. Maybe Unix
SVR6 or 4.9BSD will come close in elegance and functionality and
efficiency to what Multics was 20 years ago. Or more probably it will
be a hacked up monster ten times the size and ten times slower and 
incomprehensible and ...

(note: Unix V7 is quite another thing, addresses different needs than
those served by a Multics or System V, and was an elegant exercise in
minimalism on a very simple architecture)

--
Piercarlo Grandi                   | ARPA: pcg%uk.ac.aber.cs at nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
Dept of CS, UCW Aberystwyth        | UUCP: ...!mcsun!ukc!aber-cs!pcg
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