[dragontamer]

The Lions commentary was basically a work of literature for the 80s developer. Very few people were running DEC-PDP11s in the 80s, you couldn't really run the code.

Don't get me wrong: the data in the Lions book inspired later operating systems and is very important. But its a very difficult read, ill-suited for the general audience. The code does NOT run outside of DEC-PDP11 (and almost no one had that computer by the 80s, nor the compilers or tools needed to actually generate the code), so it really was just a work of literature and OS-study more-so than actual technical documentation.

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In contrast, you can buy a complete Rasp. Pi system for $35, with a myriad of books and materials on programming (Python, C, Java, even GPU-coding).

Then you can buy an Arduino for $20, and a breadboard kit (wires, breadboard, resistors, etc. etc.) under $100 and get cracking today. Complete understanding of the machine, and very cheap and accessible.

Even the Commodore 64 was $500+, in 80s money (so inflation adjust as appropriate).

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The 2010s is way better for learning programming than the 80s ever was. Not only is computing respected hobby these days... but its so cheap and information is freely available.

[monocasa]

Tons of people had access to PDP-11s at the time, they sold half a million or so of them. It was super common for high schools to have one or two for instance. And vast majority of them were running UNIX since you could get it for the cost of the blank tape at the time; AT&T was forbidden from selling it due to antitrust regulations.

And you're acting like it's some impenetrable tome. Give it a read, it's a better intro to OS dev than Tannenbaum, IMO.

And a RPi has tons of still hidden bits, and an Arduino is even less powerful than most PDP-11s.

[dragontamer]

> And you're acting like it's some impenetrable tome. Give it a read, it's a better intro to OS dev than Tannenbaum, IMO.

That's not my point. Virtually no one was reading in code from Lion's book and compiling it.

Today, if someone has a bunch of code written for Rasp. Pi, you can download it from Github, change a few lines (to blink a different light or something), and then run your own changed version yourself.

The C64 manuals of the 80s were the most similar in this regard: people would faithfully type the code written in the C64 manuals into their C64, and "learn" by tweaking those programs.

In contrast, the Lion's book was basically theory. You wouldn't actually change the code, it was there for deeper learning purposes.

> And a RPi has tons of still hidden bits, and an Arduino is even less powerful than most PDP-11s.

Arduino is the beginner microcontroller. You'll quickly graduate to STM32 if you need to push more processing power.

But with that being said: Arduino / ATMega328p is built like a tank. The lax electrical characteristics make ATMega328p much better for beginner electronic engineers: you can be quite far off on voltages and still have a working system.

In contrast: send 5V down a 3.3V pin on STM32, and you'll fry it. ATMega328p can actually take that kind of abuse in most cases.

STM32 is fully open and small enough to fully understand as well. But I dare say that most people probably only need the power of an Arduino / ATMega328p for most electronics projects. Having wider tolerances is better IMO, rather than spec-chasing.

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Or hell, buy both. The STM32 is $10 and the ATMega328p boards are also $10.

https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/stmicroelectronics...

https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/microchip-technolo...

This isn't a $500+ investment like it was back in the 80s. Things are way cheaper and easier to do, with plenty of free documentation. I mean, we have Github these days to share code and examples with friends. Its just so much easier to collaborate and learn compared to the past.

[monocasa]

There were tons of people recompiling the code in Lion's. You just didn't type it in, but you pulled it off of dectape. Lion's was a huge part of why Unix proliferated so much.

Like, the whole point of xv6 is to recreate that environment.