Mastodawn

Please don’t be shocked, but I’ve been reading old #UNIX Review magazines on Archive.org, as one does. I’ve been finding a number of interesting artifacts throughout. This June 1984 ad by Cadmus Computer Systems listed a #USENET address: !wivax!cadmus.

This is a UUCP bang path, for the kids who don’t know. The ! separates relay hops, it’s a literal routing instruction. Get to the backbone, reach wivax, forward to cadmus.

No DNS.

Machines screamed at each other to swap data.

#unix_surrealism

wivax was a VAX at Wang Laboratories in Lowell, MA where Cadmus was based.

The TELEX number printed right next to it is also interesting. This represents telegraph infrastructure and the infant internet, side by side in a transitional moment.

Here’s an ad for cross-compilers and assemblers for UNIX environments.

My favorite detail here is this brag: “Over the past 3 years, we’ve built over 1MB of working code.” Cross-compilers, assemblers, simulators, and debuggers targeting six architectures across a dozen hosts. This code was dense.

The 80’s #UNIX wars were a wild time.

It’s also very fun to read the articles from the time and see what they were predicting for the future. “UNIX for the masses” was a popular topic.

This is an original ad for a #UNIX computer company.

No AI art here! You can see the artist’s signature over the dragon’s wing.

The art in these ads is incredible. This one for ChipCrafter by SeattleSilicon is pretty great.

This is some proto- @prahou art right here.

To think all of this amazing art is buried in 40-year-old computer magazines.

This one is from the July 1988 issue of "VLSI Systems Design."

Devine Lu Linvega Feb 17

@occult strong Memphis style energy <3

@neauoire new Radiohead album art just dropped (1988).

There’s an LLM coding joke in here somewhere.

@neauoire we need to normalize Lisp fan art like this.

Editor: quick! I need art to accompany the article on internationalization of #UNIX for our Dec 1985 issue!

Illustrator on shrooms: say no more.

Boss: I need art for an article on #UNIX networking technologies for the next issue of UNIX WORLD.

Artist: come back tomorrow.

Computing in the year 2029 as depicted in UNIX WORLD magazine, 1985.

From a 1991 SunExpert magazine article about “What’s to come” for network protocols. The article depicts a man traveling into the 2020’s, seemingly unaware of the chaos he’ll find.

He’s going to pass @prahou traveling back in time to 1991 to get some mint condition Sun workstations.

#SunMicrosystems #UNIX

Hey #Fediverse! See you all at the 1985 California Computer Show.

#UNIX #RetroComputing

Oh, this is good...

From UNIX World, 1985: "It finds the subtle bugs in my C programs" - Claude B. Finn.

40 years later, people are using Claude to find bugs in programs. What's old is new again.

#Anthropic #LLM #Claude #ClaudeCode #AI #Security #Programming #UNIX #C

@occult Every new language, tool, platform, library, and framework in the last 40 years was going to cut development time in half. Must be close to zero already even without Claude.

@bit101 @occult I'm ready for things to start taking longer to do. Exquisitely lengthening the time to accomplish tasks, that's my goal.

Dr. Ferrous Mar 7

@Curry @occult @bit101 join academia, where even glacial progress is sometimes too fast.

@Curry @bit101 @occult that’s all scope creep and stacking abstraction upon framework upon abstraction.