A 1982 AT&T Bell Labs film for students about the Unix system and how it can be used practically. It includes Lorinda Cherry building a talking calculator by piping together Unix commands, and a spell checker made from Unix utilities.
Why Hacker News points people here: HN commenters recommend it as a demonstration of the Unix philosophy, with small tools composed through pipes.
“both are really excellent demonstrations and eludications of the Unix philosophy and mindset”HN comment, 2015
“both are really excellent demonstrations and eludications of the Unix philosophy and mindset”
Demonstrates the Unix philosophy via pipes and a talking calculator.
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That was a great watch...and if you keep on watching for a few more minutes, you can watch Lorinda L. Cherry rewrite his implementation using Unix pipes and then creating a talking calculator. The screencasting technology wasn't quite there yet ;), but both are really excellent demonstrations and eludications of the Unix philosophy and mindset that is pretty much unchanged and invaluable ~34 years later this video
Recommendsbithive123Dec 2015
“Others might also find interesting this video from 1982”
Kernighan builds a spell checker from UNIX utilities in 1982.
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Others might also find interesting this video from 1982 where Brian Kernighan demonstrates building a simple spell checker using UNIX command line utilities: this video
RecommendsyesenadamNov 2019
“Also I found these fascinating”
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Also I found these fascinating: The Unix-Haters Handbook (1994) has a lot of history and takes you back in time.. link Brian Kernighan 'interviews' Ken Thompson (2019) - Ken telling stories. They're both very funny, a very entertaining video, some stories I (and even Brian) hadn't heard. link UNIX: Making Computers Easier To Use (1982) this video Also the other day I read in the AWK book that it was mainly inspired by SNOBOL4, so looked at some SNOBOL4 books from archive.org, from 1970-2 and just before, slightly earlier than Unix history takes you back. One tells you how to organize your punch cards to feed in the program.. Another had a bibliography with many dozens of SNOBOL books. It was widely used by people in the humanities apparently; like AWK it was at home dealing with words and text.
RecommendsabetlenDec 2020
“Lorinda Cherry writing a talking calculator by piping together 3 unix commands.”
Includes Lorinda Cherry building a talking calculator from piped commands.
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They really were. Here's a version of that video that includes Lorinda Cherry writing a talking calculator by piping together 3 unix commands. this video
RecommendsducktectiveSep 2021
“Lorinda Cherry herself explaining how to write a "talking calculator" (in 1982!) using dc and Unix pipelines”
Lorinda Cherry demonstrates a talking calculator built from dc and Unix pipelines in 1982.
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Look what I've found! Lorinda Cherry herself explaining how to write a "talking calculator" (in 1982!) using dc and Unix pipelines: this video
RecommendsAmbroosFeb 2022
“I love what she does here”
Cherry demonstrates pipes and scripts with an amusing choice of input.
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I love what she does here: this video , also demonstrating pipes and scripts. The input she chooses makes the whole segment pretty damn funny.
Cites itqqiiApr 2020Full comment
Unfortunately I think plan9 only remains this way by keeping the people who use it small, being elitist and somewhat unwelcoming[0]. That's not to say I wouldn't also recommend spending a weekend messing around. I was recently having a conversation about the unix philosophy on reddit[1]. As nix and software built for nix became more and more mainstream it becomes harder and harder to keep with the unix philosophy and the philosophy of this post. [0]: link [1]: this video
Cites itLeoPantheraJan 2021
Spell checker demo built from unix primitives.
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URL with time: this video In the same video, there's a fun moment where they demonstrate constructing a simple spell checker out of unix primitives, and the demonstrator comments that "unix" is a word unlikely to ever appear in the dictionary: this video Of course, now it's in every dictionary!
Cites itgabrielsrokaMay 2024
“Similar but using redirects instead of pipes”
Younger Kernighan explains redirects instead of pipes in a 1982 film.
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See also a much younger Brian from 40 years ago explaining pipeline link Similar but using redirects instead of pipes this video
