Ask HN: Old Folks with Unix Skills
Actually, some of us grew old while digital devices became ubiquitous. We've been using digital devices for decades. The teenager who was programming in BASIC on a microcomputer is now in her 60s. That grey-haired 70-something might have been using UNIX at work every day in the 1980s.
What grates about the "digital-help-for-seniors" programs is that they offer only a tiny subset of the learning we did and are still doing. For some of us, the nicest feature of general-purpose computing in the 2020s is the survival and ready availability of the command line, so we can do end-runs around complicated GUIs to get work done digitally.
If you're one of the seniors to whom that last comment makes sense, do you think an online organisation of like-minded people sounds interesting? It doesn't exist yet, but I suggest calling it OFUS - Old (Folks/Farts) with Unix Skills. For starters, email me at unix@datafix.com.au.
FYI, I'm 77 and still work every day in a BASH shell (as a data auditor).
29 comments
[ 5.4 ms ] story [ 175 ms ] threadI haven't used Windows since 2007 and don't miss it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mo2q7d5dJgg
personally I remember using it on an IBM 3090 at the New Hampshire Insurance company in the late 1980s when I was in the computer explorers.
Sometime I think about setting up a PDP-11 emulator and running RSTS/E in it for old times sake.
I also really enjoyed running OS/9 on a TRS-80 color computer, which was a really cheap machine with serious limitations (32 character display) but I had mine (I think a Coco 3 at that point) hooked up to a TRS-80 Model 100 and a DEC printing terminal so I had a Unix-like experience on three consoles, my impression was that OS/9 was a better OS than anything mainstream on IBM PC hardware at the time.
Even so-called "computer savvy" young people just know which buttons to push, and nothing about doing something powerful that's not canned in some app.
I still would like to see people given the ability to CREATE (like they did with hypercard) and not just adapt to "change for the sake of change" features du jour.
Keeping it short for now.
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Airing of Grievances (must be Festivus already)
As an example, I am a seasoned Unix dinosaur, started on a Sun-2 workstation. I got so used to the crippled ios that when Apple FINALLY introduced (drum roll) FILES, I didn't know what to do with them. I got so used to workarounds.
And MacOS. Sheesh. Gotta do this: chsh -s /bin/bash
Here is a list of commands, some of which are unique to Apple
https://ss64.com/osx/
What's wrong with zsh?
Also there are plugins like https://github.com/chrissicool/zsh-bash
2. Scripts with #!/bin/bash or #!/bin/sh run as expected — even with bashisms.
OLD (Old Linux Devs)
SENIORS (Some Elderly 'Nix InventORS)
... Chat GPT could probably do better.
That being said, how old is "Old"?
Good question about "Old". In Australia there's at least one well-defined cut-off: 75 years. If you're 75 or older: - when you die your death isn't classed as "premature", and demographers don't assign you any "potential years of life lost" - you're no longer invited to have screening for bowel, breast or cervical cancer screening (invites go to 50-74 year-olds)
(well I'm over 40 but I joined tech for only 5 years so kinda young)