{ "version": "1.0.0", "segments": [ { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "0", "endTime": "5.131", "body": "I mentioned this in a previous episode, but in college I participated in some" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "5.131", "endTime": "9.18", "body": "hacking competitions. There's something that I learned in one of them that I" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "9.18", "endTime": "14.091", "body": "will never forget. A hacker breached our network and dropped a payload on the" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "14.091", "endTime": "20.445", "body": "system. No matter what we did, we couldn't remove the file. We used sudo, we switched to root," }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "21.088", "endTime": "26.728", "body": "but still could not delete it. We checked it with ls-l, it looked like a normal file." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "27.531", "endTime": "34.054", "body": "Nothing should be preventing us from deleting it. After the competition, they did a Q&A where you" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "34.054", "endTime": "38.65", "body": "could ask questions to learn what happened. That's when I learned about the immutable bit." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "39.232", "endTime": "44.551", "body": "If you are on a Linux computer, you can run chatter plus i followed by the file name." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "45.274", "endTime": "49.609", "body": "This will set the immutable bit on it. Adding this prevents the file from being" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "49.609", "endTime": "55.611", "body": "deleted or modified in any way, even by root. And ls-l won't show it." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "56.032", "endTime": "62.877", "body": "You need to run ls adder on the file to see it. It's an extended attribute and ls doesn't list those." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "63.439", "endTime": "68.296", "body": "You can remove it easily with chatter minus i, but if you don't know it's there," }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "68.517", "endTime": "71.186", "body": "you might spend hours wondering what's going on." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "72.109", "endTime": "77.268", "body": "That all happened on a Debian-based server running the Linux kernel. But today isn't" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "77.268", "endTime": "82.868", "body": "about Linux, it's about Unix. It's about an underappreciated legend in the tech community." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "83.249", "endTime": "89.572", "body": "It's about Ken Thompson. From his early work at Bell Labs to co-creating the Go programming" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "89.572", "endTime": "92.623", "body": "language on this episode of In The Shell." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "94.429", "endTime": "97.982", "body": "We'll see why we're not shipping Windows 98. Absolutely." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "98.524", "endTime": "101.896", "body": "Mr. Jobs, you're a bright and influential man. Here it comes." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "102.598", "endTime": "106.713", "body": "It's sad and clear that on several accounts you've discussed, you don't know what you're" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "106.713", "endTime": "113.557", "body": "talking about. The key to success is developers, developers, developers, developers, developers," }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "114.079", "endTime": "117.19", "body": "developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "117.19", "endTime": "122.79", "body": "Jens and I don't own phones. Neither should you people, if you have any common sense." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "124.817", "endTime": "130.457", "body": "My name is Josh, and I'm able to keep this podcast independent and advertisement-free" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "130.457", "endTime": "135.555", "body": "because of support from listeners like you. If you are finding value in what I'm doing here," }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "136.117", "endTime": "142.179", "body": "consider becoming a paid supporter at members.sideofburritos.com. And as a thank you," }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "142.48", "endTime": "147.719", "body": "members get early access to new videos, ad-free versions of everything, bonus content," }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "147.719", "endTime": "153.74", "body": "and access to a live monthly Q&A. Thanks for considering. Now let's get back to the show." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "154.884", "endTime": "162.331", "body": "Ken Thompson was born in New Orleans in 1943. As a child, he showed an early fascination with logic." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "162.672", "endTime": "168.453", "body": "He once recalled that in grade school, he would do arithmetic problems and binary just for fun." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "168.954", "endTime": "173.792", "body": "This innate curiosity for how things worked set the stage for his future in computing." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "174.615", "endTime": "179.131", "body": "Thompson went on to study engineering at the University of California, Berkeley," }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "179.713", "endTime": "187.761", "body": "earning his bachelor's degree in 1965 and master's in 1966 in electrical engineering and computer science." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "188.624", "endTime": "194.485", "body": "Armed with these degrees and a love for coding, he headed east to join one of the most legendary" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "194.485", "endTime": "202.915", "body": "research centers in history, AT&T's Bell Laboratories. In 1966, Thompson was hired by Bell Labs," }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "202.915", "endTime": "209.639", "body": "the research arm of AT&T, known for massive innovations like the transistor and satellite communications." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "210.783", "endTime": "215.601", "body": "At the time, Bell Labs was collaborating on an ambitious project called Multics," }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "215.962", "endTime": "221.803", "body": "a cutting-edge operating system intended to serve hundreds of users on a giant mainframe." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "222.385", "endTime": "228.627", "body": "Multics was revolutionary in concept, but had become unwieldy in practice. Famously," }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "228.627", "endTime": "233.685", "body": "it struggled to support even three simultaneous users due to its complexity." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "234.548", "endTime": "239.225", "body": "Frustrated with Multics' bloat, Bell Labs pulled out of the project in 1969," }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "239.666", "endTime": "245.668", "body": "leaving Thompson with both the experience of what not to do and an opportunity to do something different." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "246.47", "endTime": "252.231", "body": "Around this same time, Thompson had written a simple computer game for fun called Space Travel." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "252.231", "endTime": "257.731", "body": "After Multics was gone, he still wanted to play his game, but the only machine available" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "257.731", "endTime": "262.809", "body": "was an obsolete Digital Equipment Corp PDP-7 minicomputer" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "262.166", "endTime": "268.382", "body": "with no operating system of its own. So in a move that would become legendary, Ken Thompson set out" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "268.382", "endTime": "275.548", "body": "to build his own operating system from scratch. Working essentially alone on the PDP-7 in 1969," }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "276.436", "endTime": "282.776", "body": "Thompson designed and coded a new far simpler OS that he initially just wanted for personal use." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "283.354", "endTime": "288.971", "body": "As one historian described it, in a burst of productivity, he just sat down and wrote the" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "288.971", "endTime": "295.208", "body": "Unix operating system in four weeks in assembly. This new system was elegant and minimal by" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "295.208", "endTime": "302.105", "body": "necessity. The PDP-7 had only four kilobytes of memory, a ridiculously small amount even for the" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "302.105", "endTime": "308.156", "body": "time, which forced Thompson to keep the design lean and efficient. He wrote a basic kernel," }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "308.425", "endTime": "314.641", "body": "a command line shell to run commands, an editor for text, and even an assembler to translate code." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "314.641", "endTime": "319.608", "body": "was a time-sharing operating system that allowed multiple users to interact with the computer" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "319.608", "endTime": "325.196", "body": "and run multiple programs at once, a feat typically reserved for much larger systems." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "326.477", "endTime": "331.805", "body": "Thompson's colleague, Dennis Ritchie, soon joined in the effort, and together they continued to" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "331.805", "endTime": "339.015", "body": "improve this new OS. By 1970, at the suggestion of a co-worker, Brian Kerninghan, they named it" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "339.015", "endTime": "345.524", "body": "Unix as a pun on the overly complex Multics project. If Multics aimed to do everything," }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "346.105", "endTime": "351.272", "body": "Thompson's Unix would do just a few things extremely well. Working with Ritchie and a small" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "351.272", "endTime": "357.061", "body": "team, Thompson's Bell Lab group introduced several fundamental ideas in the early Unix system." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "357.581", "endTime": "363.129", "body": "They implemented a hierarchical file system, organizing files and nested directories," }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "363.39", "endTime": "366.634", "body": "the concept of treating hardware devices as special files," }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "366.634", "endTime": "366.654", "body": "EFFORTS" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "366.654", "endTime": "366.694", "body": "11" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "366.694", "endTime": "366.734", "body": "10" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "366.734", "endTime": "366.774", "body": "12" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "366.774", "endTime": "366.814", "body": "12" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "366.814", "endTime": "366.855", "body": "14" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "366.855", "endTime": "366.915", "body": "15" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "366.915", "endTime": "366.975", "body": "14" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "366.975", "endTime": "367.015", "body": "16" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "367.015", "endTime": "367.095", "body": "16" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "367.095", "endTime": "367.115", "body": "16" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "367.115", "endTime": "372.723", "body": "and the notion of processes, programs that could run concurrently, which was key to multitasking." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "373.504", "endTime": "378.291", "body": "They even devised pipes, a mechanism for chaining programs' outputs to inputs," }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "378.671", "endTime": "381.475", "body": "enabling small tools to be combined flexibly." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "382.156", "endTime": "388.886", "body": "These ideas formed the now-famous Unix philosophy of building simple, modular programs that can work together." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "389.286", "endTime": "391.309", "body": "As author Peter Salas put it," }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "391.63", "endTime": "395.175", "body": "the Unix philosophy consists of maybe two or three notions." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "395.175", "endTime": "398.159", "body": "The first is that everything is a file." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "398.64", "endTime": "401.984", "body": "Second is that you write programs that do one thing well." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "402.805", "endTime": "409.315", "body": "Another key to Unix's success was Thompson's creation of a new programming language called B in 1970," }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "409.315", "endTime": "412.159", "body": "which he used for early development of Unix." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "412.82", "endTime": "417.767", "body": "B was a simplified language, and Thompson named it B after his wife Bonnie." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "418.588", "endTime": "419.589", "body": "As Unix..." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "419.589", "endTime": "427.02", "body": "grew, B's limitations became apparent, so Dennis Ritchie developed a successor language, C, in 1971." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "428.181", "endTime": "435.031", "body": "In 1973, Thompson and Ritchie boldly rewrote the Unix kernel in C, turning Unix into a portable" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "435.031", "endTime": "440.559", "body": "system that could be adapted to run on different computers rather than being tied to one type of" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "440.559", "endTime": "447.008", "body": "hardware. This decision to make Unix hardware-independent was hugely significant. It meant" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "447.008", "endTime": "453.197", "body": "their operating system could spread far and wide. And spread it did. Thompson gave the first public" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "453.197", "endTime": "460.988", "body": "presentation on Unix in 1973, and soon universities began requesting copies. The source code was shared" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "460.988", "endTime": "468.338", "body": "for a modest license fee with academic institutions, which was possible because AT&T, under a consent" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "468.338", "endTime": "472.063", "body": "decree, wasn't in the computer business and thus allowed..." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "472.063", "endTime": "477.912", "body": "to be distributed for research. The University of California at Berkeley was one of the first" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "477.912", "endTime": "484.942", "body": "places to get Unix. Thompson even spent a sabbatical year there in 1975, helping students" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "484.942", "endTime": "491.431", "body": "install and enhance it. This led to the Berkeley Software Distribution, BSD, lineage of Unix." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "492.292", "endTime": "497.86", "body": "Back at Bell Labs, Thompson and the team continued refining Unix through the 1970s." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "497.86", "endTime": "505.15", "body": "In 1983, Thompson and Ritchie received the ACM Turing Award, often called the Nobel Prize of" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "505.15", "endTime": "510.237", "body": "Computing, for their development of generic operating system theory and the implementation" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "510.237", "endTime": "516.947", "body": "of Unix. Despite his towering achievements, Ken Thompson was and remains a rather modest," }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "517.247", "endTime": "522.795", "body": "quirky engineer. In the early days, he would personally hand-cut Unix distribution tapes" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "522.795", "endTime": "524.538", "body": "for users, signing them." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "524.538", "endTime": "531.458", "body": "off with a cheerful note that read, Love, Ken. Stories like this underscore that Thompson wasn't" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "531.458", "endTime": "537.957", "body": "motivated by fame or fortune. He simply loved creating elegant software. If you listened to" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "537.957", "endTime": "543.935", "body": "episode 1 of season 2 on Minus Torvalds, you might be wondering how Unix and Linux relate." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "544.436", "endTime": "551.377", "body": "Here's a simple way to think of it. Unix is the original. Ken Thompson, along with Dennis Ritchie," }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "551.377", "endTime": "558.036", "body": "created Unix at Bell Labs in 1969. It was a proprietary, though widely shared operating" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "558.036", "endTime": "564.315", "body": "system that introduced the core ideas mentioned earlier. AT&T eventually offered Unix commercially," }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "564.555", "endTime": "570.693", "body": "and several flavors of Unix emerged over the years, like BSD, mostly maintained by companies" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "570.693", "endTime": "577.012", "body": "or universities. Linux came later as a reinvention. In 1991, about" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "577.012", "endTime": "583.021", "body": "20 years after Unix's birth, a Finnish student named Linus Torvalds wrote a new kernel that" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "583.021", "endTime": "589.456", "body": "imitated the functionality of Unix. This became Linux, which was essentially a free open-source" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "589.456", "endTime": "595.931", "body": "clone of Unix, created from scratch. Linus's goal was to have a Unix-like system he could" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "595.931", "endTime": "602.366", "body": "run on his own personal computer, an Intel 386 PC, because at the time, true Unix was" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "602.366", "endTime": "609.146", "body": "expensive or limited to big institutions. Unix laid the foundation, and Linux followed the same" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "609.146", "endTime": "613.957", "body": "architectural plan, with the key difference that Linux was openly shared as source code" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "613.957", "endTime": "620.717", "body": "for anyone to use or modify. Everything that makes Linux possible, from the C language it's written in" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "620.717", "endTime": "628.451", "body": "to the concept of multi-user, multitasking OS, goes back to Unix. So while Linus Torvalds rightfully" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "628.451", "endTime": "629.486", "body": "gets credit for Linux." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "629.486", "endTime": "632.971", "body": "open-source movement it fueled, he stands on Ken Thompson's shoulders." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "633.993", "endTime": "639.42", "body": "Ken Thompson's story doesn't end with Unix. He continued to push the boundaries of computing" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "639.42", "endTime": "645.869", "body": "and the decades that followed, both at Bell Labs and beyond. In the 1980s, Bell Labs embarked on" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "645.869", "endTime": "652.278", "body": "a new project to build a successor to Unix. Thompson was a key player in designing Plan 9" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "652.278", "endTime": "658.147", "body": "from Bell Labs, an operating system that took Unix's core ideas and extended them even further." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "658.948", "endTime": "664.636", "body": "While Plan 9 never became a mainstream OS, it introduced concepts ahead of their time," }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "664.836", "endTime": "671.706", "body": "and its influence can be seen in later systems. One very practical innovation from Plan 9 was the" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "671.706", "endTime": "678.235", "body": "creation of UTF-8, a universal text encoding that Thompson co-devised with Rob Pike in 1992." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "678.976", "endTime": "681.961", "body": "If you've ever seen an emoji or any text" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "681.961", "endTime": "687.248", "body": "in English, or any other language, display correctly on different devices, you can thank" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "687.248", "endTime": "693.923", "body": "Ken Thompson for UTF-8. I'm reading a book right now called Code, and one of the topics it covers" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "693.923", "endTime": "699.874", "body": "is how encoding works, converting bits into human-readable text, and vice versa. It's a great" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "699.874", "endTime": "707.293", "body": "book on different computer science topics, written in an easy-to-understand way. After a storied 34-year" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "707.293", "endTime": "713.807", "body": "career, Ken Thompson retired from Bell Labs in late 2000. By that time, Bell Labs had changed," }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "714.088", "endTime": "720.321", "body": "AT&T spun it off to Lucent Technologies in the 90s, and the golden era of the lab was winding down." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "720.984", "endTime": "728.061", "body": "But Thompson wasn't done creating. In the mid-2000s, he moved to California and joined Google as a" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "728.061", "endTime": "734.435", "body": "distinguished engineer. There, even in his 60s, he once again made a mark on software history." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "735.166", "endTime": "742.903", "body": "Thompson became one of the co-creators of the Go programming language, also known as Golang, which Google introduced in 2009." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "744.223", "endTime": "749.056", "body": "Go is designed to be simple, efficient, and scalable for building modern software." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "749.523", "endTime": "752.123", "body": "It's used in many large cloud services today." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "752.955", "endTime": "758.804", "body": "Even beyond these headline projects, Thompson's fingerprints are on countless aspects of computing." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "758.804", "endTime": "767.455", "body": "He played a role in defining regular expressions for search patterns in text, which have become an everyday tool for programmers and users." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "768.104", "endTime": "771.719", "body": "And if you've ever used GREP, Thompson wrote the original version." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "772.856", "endTime": "782.218", "body": "While Ken Thompson might not be as much of a household name as Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, his influence on technology is arguably deeper and more pervasive." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "783.01", "endTime": "787.64", "body": "As one writer aptly observed, Thompson is perhaps an even greater unsung hero." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "786.909", "endTime": "789.893", "body": "whose name may be forgotten by all but the curious." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "790.274", "endTime": "792.837", "body": "We will reap from his intellectual gifts forever," }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "792.837", "endTime": "796.022", "body": "and most of us will likely never know who he is." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "796.963", "endTime": "800.408", "body": "Indeed, billions of people use devices and services every day" }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "800.408", "endTime": "802.491", "body": "that rely on Thompson's creations," }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "802.892", "endTime": "805.676", "body": "whether it's Unix or Linux powering servers," }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "806.016", "endTime": "810.563", "body": "the C language and its descendants like C++ and Java running apps," }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "811.003", "endTime": "813.787", "body": "or UTF-8 enabling global communications," }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "814.428", "endTime": "817.753", "body": "all without realizing the debt we owe to this one engineer." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "820.056", "endTime": "825.223", "body": "In the Shell is written, researched, and recorded by me, UID0." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "827.126", "endTime": "829.549", "body": "If you are listening on an app that lets you rate shows," }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "830.01", "endTime": "831.692", "body": "please take a minute to rate this one." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "832.634", "endTime": "834.376", "body": "I would truly appreciate it." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "836.399", "endTime": "839.383", "body": "That's it. Take care, and I'll see you next time." }, { "speaker": "Josh", "startTime": "839.383", "endTime": "844.121", "body": "time" } ] }