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.

breakfast Mar 26

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.

Plasmawiz Feb 17

@occult @neauoire This is what it feels like when the Lambda Calculus finally hits.

@plasmawiz right between the eyes.

Plasmawiz Feb 17

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

Matthew Martin Mar 6

@occult English to C translator! That is Claude like in more way than one

@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.

Christian Berger DECT 2763 Mar 6

@bit101 @occult Developers somehow seem to turn those advances into increased complexity.

patrislav ♾️ #RIPNatenom Mar 7

@casandro I guess the economists were on to something with their rebound effect @bit101 @occult

John Abbe (aka Slow)Mar 8

@patrislav @casandro @bit101 @occult This was a helpful overview for me of this kind of spot-on context: https://www.caimito.net/en/blog/2025/12/07/the-recurring-dream-of-replacing-developers.html

One thing that happens in each round is that some portion of the people who are thinking they won't need programmers any more end up becoming programmers using the language/tools that were supposed to replace developers. (Business people learning COBOL, etc.)

Hoping we can lean into a future that repeats that pattern, in software and ideally hardware as well.

Why We've Tried to Replace Developers Every Decade

Every decade brings new promises: this time, we'll finally make software development simple enough that we won't need so many developers.

Caimito Agile Life

Tim Curry Mar 7

@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.

Pino Carafa Mar 7

@bit101 @occult Those promises have proven to be bullshit ever since Synon/2 was first inflicted on me in 1986

Elias Mårtenson Mar 21

@rozeboosje @bit101 @occult wow. I just read up on synon, dug into a bunch of screenshots of yhe development process.

I guess this is one of those things that demos amazingly well when you want to build a somple crud application.

It's still not clear to me how you do things outside of the templates. You write a separate program in COBOL and just call into it?

Pino Carafa Mar 21

@loke @bit101 @occult We used Synon/2 on the AS/400 35 years ago so my memory is a bit patchy but you had a choice of "templates" for commonly used design patterns. These produced a Synon/2 code framework that you can't drill into but that "did the job", but it also contained points into which you could insert chunks of RPG/400. You saved a day not having to code the basics. Then you lost a week hacking around how Synon/2 never did exactly what you wanted it to, losing more time than you saved.

Pino Carafa Mar 21

@loke @bit101 @occult And this pattern has repeated itself with every 4GL or other product that claimed to "magically" do most of your work for you ("Clarion") and allow you to "Develop 10 times faster" (right, PCSoft, "WinDev" and "WebDev") and I see no reason whatsoever to believe that modern "AI" tools like "CoPilot" or "Claude" would be any better. Claude will be very impressive until it just won't do what you need it to, and Claude, and DEFINITELY you, will have no idea why.

Elias Mårtenson Mar 21

@rozeboosje @bit101 @occult right. As someone who has seen the marketing from products like this for at least 40 years, it sure seems similar.

Pino Carafa Mar 21

@loke @bit101 @occult PCSoft, in particular, always annoyed the living shite out of me with their advertising full of scantily clad young women in suggestive poses. Merde, my French friends, this is not 1960 any more and sexism and misogynism have not been acceptable in advertising for decades. Then again, the advertising is as shitty as their product so at least it's not "false"...

Elias Mårtenson Mar 21

@rozeboosje @bit101 @occult in fact, you don't even need llm tools to have this experience these days. This is precisely how any random web framework from the last decade or so feels.

Pino Carafa Mar 21

@loke @bit101 @occult Behold my surprised face: 🫩

@bit101 @occult ✨Lying✨

It's summer, 1985.

I get a call from my buddy to open this month’s issue of UNIX WORLD magazine to page 110.

I see they are preparing to standardize the C programming language.

I say, “This is a good thing" under my breath.

I am still punk as fuck.

@occult these are all so good!

They should re-create this steel-bound UNIX reference manual.

Florian 'floe' Echtler Mar 6

@occult giving new meaning to "throwing the book at someone" 👌

Hey @prahou is your computer sad or happy?

Is this Mr. Computo?

From the May 1985 issue of UNIX WORLD magazine.

Oh my, it's his father!

These article illustrations are truly something.

UNIX Review, April 1985.

#UNIX #unix_surrealism

When someone asks me what the #Fediverse, #Mastodon or #ActivityPub is I'll use this illustration from UNIX Review, April 1985.

OBEY.

BYTE Magazine, October 1983.

From the same issue, this illustration could be used in an article tomorrow about #LLM overreliance.

@occult What about BlueSky?

@slyborg this is what I would say about BlueSky.

Lot⁴⁹ Mar 8

@occult Gonna have to borrow that image for future use.

@12thRITS Thank the illustrator, John Cospito!

jlamasfripp Mar 9

@12thRITS @occult take this beautiful Vaper Draper too. You'll need it like three times a week.

@[email protected] cover image of the 2028 ActivityPub Magazine 😝

Wendroid 🇺🇦Mar 8

@occult Isn’t that “the cloud”

Felis_Catus_Domesticus Mar 9

people on the fedi are another matter entirely.

thank god for block and mute.

Maestro Mushi Mar 20

@Felis_Catus_Domesticus @occult these borgs make no sense, how can you be both for bernie sanders, maga, prolgbtq+ anti-vax and pro palestine. This feels vaguely sionist

Felis_Catus_Domesticus Mar 9

the fedi will likely never live up to any promise because it is too easily made into a censorship platform. Nostr is a better design but it's currently filled with even crazier people than the fedi. Major tinfoil hat crowd in there, but that is the price you pay for free speech- you might hear something you don't like. Which brings us back to block and mute as tools.

@occult well that would be a fully decentralised network which the ferdiverse isn't.

@occult It's so god-awful that it's awesome

@d1 I'd argue it's only awesome.

My camera shoots fascists Mar 11

So, the fediverse is like a sort of online party gag where you unsuspectingly tap a link and get sprayed in the face by a rainbow. (Or maybe that's a unicorn fart?)

Christoff, the human Mar 12

@occult @nopatience the world of tomorrow we should have had