@sullybiker Oh, if you’re into the #Unix tradition and philosophy then you need to learn #Perl. No other general-purpose #programming language has Unix baked into it so deeply.
This is hilarious. A #Google engineer invented #zx to make command line scripting easier with #NodeJS, because at a certain point #shell scripts get too complicated and you need a Real #Programming Language.
This is exactly #Perl’s use case from thirty-six years ago. But the kids want #JavaScript everywhere and would rather it take more work to convert their ascended #Bash scripts to a vastly different syntax.
“#ShellJS is a portable implementation of #Unix#shell commands on top of the #NodeJS API. […] say goodbye to those gnarly #Bash scripts!”
Of course, #PerlPowerTools also exists if you want Unix commands that work the same everywhere. It has exactly four dependencies to download from #CPAN outside of the #Perl core.
@swagpussc The basic thing to understand is that this is not a world of Windows.
There have always been other operating systems, and in particular there has been, since the late 1960s, a large class of operating systems that are: Unix; one of the many flavours of Unix that #Unix split into in the 1970s; or someone creating an operating system that's very much like Unix, from the ground up, a decade or 2 later.
#Linux is (the kernel of) the last sort of operating system.
@swagpussc (...continued)
Aside: There's a whole explanation about #Linux only being a kernel, not the whole of an operating system. The "kernel"/"shell" thing is a metaphor.
@swagpussc (...continued)
What you need to know at this point in your learning process is simply that around the Linux "kernel" there are different flavours of the "shell" part, hence different "distributions", in the jargon, of Linux-based operating systems.
They're the full operating system "nut", both "kernel" and "shell", in one and can trace their lineages, complete with long version control histories going back decades, to old #Unix flavours of the 1970s.
They're not the same as one another.
(continued...)
@swagpussc (...continued)
Often forgotten by people is the period in between. The people who cloned Linux and the (GNU) "shell" around it often worked from samizdat doco about 1970s Unix.
In the 1980s and early 1990s, there were a whole bunch of commercial #Unix flavours: #Xenix, HP/UX, #AIX, #SunOS, #Ultrix, OSF/1, AT&T System 3, AT&T System 5, ...
#Illumos, which came from #Solaris, which came from SunOS, is actually still around.
I'm overdue for an #introduction, especially with all you new followers…so here goes.
I'm a software engineer with a degree in Anthropology. I highly recommend the combo.
Most recently I was tech lead for Scaled Human Review at Meta. I worked in the Integrity Foundation (what other companies call "Trust and Safety") on Better Engineering initiatives and #Metaverse integration, with the teams that build human review software for the 30-40K external reviewers. I'd sworn I’d never work at Facebook, but I decided to see if I could make a difference. I couldn’t. And it wasn't a good fit for either of us. But I learned a lot about how the sausages are made and why they have such a hard time with #contentmoderation.
I've been on #socialmedia for four decades (seriously, I saw someone catfished in chat in 1978—this stuff isn't new), and virtually everyone I know I met online somewhere—many I've still never met in person. Needless to say, that's made me pretty passionate about making online communities safe for everyone, and especially marginalized groups.
I'm now a freelance #consultant, working on my own projects (I'll write more on that later), and with my wife's #consulting company (see below). I'm planning to do a lot more writing about #society and #technology (as well some #SFF), and to travel more.
I tend to write long posts (like this one). They may get shorter once my blog is back up. I don't stick to one topic, but I'll try to tag them so you can filter. I post about tech stuff (recent, as well as old geeky #Unix stuff), #social issues, #LGBTQ issues (especially the T), pretty #photos, and random personal anecdotes. When I boost, it's because I think it's something that might be interesting to someone, or some group, that follows me. Those tend to include all the above topics, plus SF&F-related things, and cool science stuff.
I'm #pan, #poly, #nonbinary (or #genderqueer, if you prefer). I prefer "they" for pronouns, but "he" is fine. I spent most of my life thinking I really was a straight cis man who just happened to be a bit quirky and a passionate and tearful ally, so I'm not too picky about how you refer to me. I'm also more than happy to answer any questions about all that, public or private.
I grew up mostly in #Maine and then lived in Massachusetts for a long time, but I now live on sovereign #Swinomish land in #WashingtonState (US), on the edge of the San Juan islands. Despite my first name (that's a story) and current location, I'm not Native American, although I focus a lot on Native American rights. My parents were both active in that area, and that was my introduction to civil rights in general.
I've been a #software engineer at various levels (from programmer to CTO to company founder) for 40+ years. I learned BASIC in high school, taught myself Pascal, FORTRAN and PL/1 in college, learned C as an intern at Bell Labs (Murray Hill, one floor up from the Unix crew), and went on from there. In college, I majored in #Anthropology with a concentration in #Psychology, and that's influenced the way I look at software ever since. Software is designed for people. Software systems build communities (whether intended or not). Anyone who does that damn well better understand how people and #communities work.
I've worked for Bell Labs (psych stats), Sperry Research (window systems, UX design), Apollo/HP (programmable shell, windowing systems, Unix porting, UX design), Bright Ideas (cookbook, educational games), OSF (windowing standards), Alfalfa (multimedia email - SMTP and X.400 :)), Wildfire (phone-based voice assistant), Utopia/USWeb (web and security consulting), Saroca (small boats), Messagefire (anti- #spam software), MessageGate (corporate compliance software), Somewhere (software consulting), ZeeVee (web video aggregation, metadata scraping), TiVo (video content correlation, #metadata pipelines), and Meta. Plus a few others.
I've been with my wife, Dr. Mollie Pepper, for over a decade. She's a #sociologist with a focus on #refugee migration, #gender, and violence; the kind of work that gives you PTSD. She did her dissertation on women's roles in the (now extremely defunct) peace process in #Myanmar (aka #Burma). A year ago she was at a military base frantically processing thousands of Afghan refugees and managing translators. She has a consulting company that specializes in evaluating and designing refugee service and placement programs. You can find her at https://carlsonpepper.com/. Everything I know about #feminism, #intersectionality, #queer theory, #CRT, and #racism I either learned from her, or she gave me the theoretical underpinnings to understand them properly.
I have two grown daughters from my first marriage with Nassim Fotouhi; a kick-ass software engineer/engineering manager who came to the States just before the Iranian revolution.
Shadi Fotouhi is an artist (see my profile background photo, go look up the drug codes and compare them to the mermaids' behavior) turned software engineer; building dynamic room installations will do that to you. She worked in QA at a gaming company, and then at Jibo; a robotics startup. Now she's a senior software engineer at Wayfair--Kubernetes, release configuration, and all that fun stuff.
Shireen Hinckley is a documentarian, digital image technician, video editor, and co-founder of Somewhere Films (https://www.somewherefilms.com/shireen-hinckley); a womxn's filmmaking collective. She works for #Beyoncé at Parkwood Entertainment, where she's an editor and post-production supervisor for all of their video releases. She worked on "Black is King" and just about every video since then, whether it's for Instagram, Times Square, Tiffany's, the Oscars, or Chloe x Halle. No, I can't tell you when the Renaissance visual album will be out—but it will be amazing.
I'm incredibly honored to have those wonderful women in my life. I wouldn't be who I am without them.
A couple other things that may come up, especially in my photos. My mother is an artist who lives in Maine in a round house she designed, and the family built, when I was in high school. And I'm part owner of a #lighthouse on Cape Cod.
Disclaimer: for postarity, I intend to post pictures of W3C artifacts that W3C isn't keeping. Feel free to mute my stream of pictures until the end of the year
I'mma follow you over at #SDF so I can boost dinner if your stuff. We're all interested over there with retro and historic computing , being perhaps the oldest, extant, public access #UNIX system - #PubNIX
Thank you for caring enough to publicly archive these treasures!
🐍 Longtime #Python developer & maintainer of various popular libraries (Fabric, Paramiko, Invoke, &c)
💻 Longtime #Linux (#Unix) #sysadmin & #DevOps engineer (so many distros, currently experimenting with #NixOS)
😻 Owned by 2 #cats (and grew up with #dogs)
🇺🇸🗽 Resident of #NewJersey
🌹🍞 Bit of a #leftist and #antifascist who still votes #Democrat when necessary
⚔️🚀 #SFF fan
& much more! ✨
Guess I'll do a proper #introduction: I'm an IT guy with a love for #Unix / #Linux, both at home and work.
Fan of all things #opensource. I've spent many years on #realtime data, used to be a full-time linux admin. I've dabbled in #bigdata, and I'm currently doing things that are called #CloudEngineering on #aws.