I wasn't raised like a contractor's son so I didn't grow with the Hole Hawg. However, working in the financial mines of the bank kingdoms in my youth, I discovered Unix. It lived in grey boxes and spoke in grunts like cd and pwd in black windows. It didn't have shiny buttons and easy-grip handles and didn't like to dialog box. It worked tirelessly in the cold rooms of the machines. Legend had it that you could depend on it if your life depended on it. Most people didn't go in those rooms. Some who went only did enough to get the job done. But I felt different. I thought once you opened its shell, there was a lot that it could say and lot one could learn. I found an old book containing its language and started to say the words to see if that worked. And it did. It spoke in the most beautiful 80-column voice and answered only what you needed and no more. We communicated and our chats grew longer - almost like scripts in a play.
Decades have passed and it has gone beyond the cold rooms to our warm pockets. It still works tirelessly. You can still depend on it. It has changed its shape and wears colours if you want it to. But deep down, I know it to have the same kernel of truth. If you want to talk to it in those ancient grunts, it will still answer back. And that to me still is the most beautiful language.
That's a poor representation of the big smile I had on my face while reading this.
I've spent 25 years now "messing" with Linux. Installing over-the-air interactive TV Linux-based mpeg stream devices in central London-based TV channels. Managing web servers and compute clusters for US universities. Wrangling SANs and VMware together to create email services for education. Load balancers. Macs. Private compute environments on VMware for developers. Kubernetes clusters for what felt like a million microservices.
All the while, Unix has been there for me to hack on, mess with, debug, wrangle, chase down, curse, and praise.
It's an old, dependable friend now, but has lost none of its vigour. I imagine it will be there long after I'm gone, probably long after any of us are around.
Two things being decades old doesn’t mean they share the same situation. Not every concept is automatically obsolete after a few decades (COBOL definitely is though).
Reading Tolkien and playing D&D in grade school primed me for an almost magical realist(?) perspective. Wargames revealed a hidden world of interconnected monoliths designed and guarded by wizards who actually thought of themselves as wizards.
As a young outsider, I could gain access to this world only by breaking in or fast-talking someone. Once inside I'd have my own room and could learn magic at my own pace. I could explore. The wizard might banish me if he finds out.
This was literally half of the books I'd read growing up come to life.
Decades have passed and it has gone beyond the cold rooms to our warm pockets. It still works tirelessly. You can still depend on it. It has changed its shape and wears colours if you want it to. But deep down, I know it to have the same kernel of truth. If you want to talk to it in those ancient grunts, it will still answer back. And that to me still is the most beautiful language.