A Brief History of Unix :: Computer Science

A Brief History of UnixThis document is designed to give mickle with no previous UNIX discover some sense of what UNIX is. This document go forth cover the memoir of UNIX and an introduction to UNIX.HISTORY OF UNIX AND CAUSES FOR ITS POPULARITYMost discussions of UNIX begin with the history of UNIX withoutexplaining why the history of UNIX is important to understanding UNIX.The remainder of this document depart describe some strengths andweaknesses of UNIX and attempt to explain why UNIX is becomingpopular. all(a) of UNIXs strengths and weaknesses can be directlyrelated to the history of its development, hence a discussion ofhistory is very make use offul.UNIX was originally developed at cost Laboratories as a privateresearch project by a small company of people starting in 1969. Thisgroup had experience with a number of different run systemsresearch efforts in the 1970s. The goals of the group were to designan direct system to satisfy the following objectivesSimple and dand ifiedWritten in a high level speech preferably than hookup manner of speakingAllow re-use of codeTypical vendor operational systems of the time were extremely large andall create verbally in assembly language. UNIX had a relatively small amountof code indite in assembly language (this is called the substance) andthe remaining code for the operating system was written in a highlevel language called C.The group worked to begin with in the high level language in developingthe operating system. As this development continued, small changeswere necessary in the kernel and the language to allow the operatingsystem to be completed. Through this evolution the kernel andassociated software were extended until a complete operating systemwas written on top of the kernel in the language C.UNIX APPLICATION computer programming INTERFACEMany proprietary operating systems have a alter view ofapplication behavior. The typical application reads some data fromdisk, memorialize or a termina l and does some processing. Output is producedonto disk, tape, tape, terminal, or printer. The operating systemsgenerally provide easy to use well-implemented facilities to supportthese types of facilities.As applications let more sophisticated they need new features suchas entanglement access, multi-tasking, and interprocess communications. In tralatitious operating systems, these features are often hard to use,not well documented, and only callable from assembly language. When aprogram makes use of these features, the program may be untold morecomplex and much more difficult to maintain.In UNIX because the C language was written to be used to implement anoperating system rather than a traditional input-processing-outputapplication, use of these sophisticated features is quite easily donefrom the C language without writing any assembly language.