[Info-vax] misstatement of Unix origin [was Re: A portable VMS, was: Re: OS Ancestry]

[Dave Froble]

On 5/24/2021 2:05 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
> On 2021-05-24, John Wallace <johnwallace4 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
>> On 24/05/2021 13:28, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>>
>>> Yes, oops. :-) Somebody already reminded me about this a few days ago
>>> and as I pointed out in response this just shows how much more portable
>>> things are when you are using an implemention language not tied to the
>>> architecture.
>>>
>>
>> Yeah sure, UNIX code was so portable that back in the 1980s anything
>> much more complex than "Hello World" had little chance of being portable
>> between (e.g.) BSD and System V even on the very same hardware.
>>
>> When the two main camps can't even agree on the basics of opening a file
>> from C,
>> as in fd = open(...),
>> it's no wonder there was a customer/vendor need for a Single UNIX
>> Specification.
>>
>> Fortunately times have moved on since then.
>
> You are confusing functionality of an operating system with the
> portability of an operating system between architectures.
>
> Your comments above talk about functionality within an operating
> system. I am talking about the ease of porting an operating system
> from one architecture to another.
>
> The choice of implementation language does not decide the functionality
> of an operating system. It is however a major factor in how easy or not
> it is to port that operating system to another architecture.

Even when (hawk, spit, gag) C doesn't work the same on different 
architectures?

-- 
David Froble                       Tel: 724-529-0450
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