kfl@hoxna.UUCP (Kenton Lee) (12/18/84)
xxx This quote is from "Into the Heart of the Mind", by Frank Rose, p. 38-39. This book is a non-technical description of AI research. "While academic researchers were delighted with the VAX 11/780, they were somewhat less enchanted with VMS, the operating system DEC had designed to run it. . . . DEC has something of a reputation among computer freaks for crufty software -*crufty* being hacker slang for poorly built, overly complex- and VMS is regarded by many as just another example. "UNIX, on the other hand, has a religious following among camplus hackers. . . . Programmers who talk about it tend to use words like *lovable* and *accommodating*. Several years ago, at a meeting of ARPA-funded researchers in Washington, an intense debate broke out over the relative merits of the two systems, at the end of which it was finally decided to go with UNIX for academic research. Bill Joy, a Berkeley grad student who's regarded as the wizard of UNIX for the work he's done in modifying the system for users outside AT&T, refers to the outcome as 'software Darwinism': UNIX was the system that was able to adapt and survive."