[R] Reminiscing on 20 years using S

[jim holtman]

My introduction to S was around 1984 on a 3B20 and VAX systems at Bell
Labs.  I still have a copy of the "brown" book written by Becker and
Chambers on the "S Interactive Language" (copyright 1984).  I remember
the "graphical" output on a daisy-wheel printer and using the HP
plotter that was connected in serial with the terminal you were using.
 When you wanted to plot, escape sequences were sent so the plotter
interpreted the output and plotted on paper that it moved back and
forth as the pens went horizontal.  It has changed a lot, but has also
stayed the same in a number of ways.

On Dec 27, 2007 5:12 PM, John Maindonald <john.maindonald at anu.edu.au> wrote:
> My first exposure to S was on an AT&T 3B2 (a 3B2/100,
> I think), at the Auckland (Mt Albert) Applied Mathematics
> Division Station of the NZ Dept of Scientific and Industrial
> Research.  The AMD Head Office in Wellington had one
> also.  There may have been one or more others; I cannot
> remember. This would have been in 1983, maybe.
>
> It was a superbly engineered machine, but the sofware
> (System V, version 3.2) had its problems.  If you back
> deleted too far along the command line, something
> unpleasant (losing the line? or worse?) happened.
> On typing 1+1 at the S command line, it took a second
> to get an answer.
>
> John Maindonald             email: john.maindonald at anu.edu.au
> phone : +61 2 (6125)3473    fax  : +61 2(6125)5549
> Centre for Mathematics & Its Applications, Room 1194,
> John Dedman Mathematical Sciences Building (Building 27)
> Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200.
>
>
> On 27 Dec 2007, at 10:00 PM, r-help-request at r-project.org wrote:
>
> > From: roger koenker <roger at ysidro.econ.uiuc.edu>
> > Date: 27 December 2007 9:56:45 AM
> > To: Greg Snow <Greg.Snow at imail.org>
> > Cc: R-help list <R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch>
> > Subject: Re: [R] Reminiscing on 20 years using S
> >
> > On Dec 26, 2007, at 2:05 PM, Greg Snow wrote:
> >
> >> I realized earlier this year (2007) that it was in 1987 that I first
> >> started using an early version of S (it was ported to VMS and was
> >> called
> >> success).  That means that I have been using some variant of S (to
> >> various degrees) for over 20 years now (I don't feel that old).
> >
> > Boxing day somehow seems appropriate for this thread.  R.I.P. to all
> > those old boxes
> > of yesteryore and the software that ran on them -- and yet there is
> > always a residual  archaeological curiosity.
> >
> > I discovered recently that the MIT athena network contains a circa
> > 1989 version
> > of S:  http://stuff.mit.edu/afs/athena/astaff/project/Sdev/S/  which
> > made me wonder
> > whether there was any likelihood that one could recreate "S Thu Dec
> > 7 16:49:47 EST 1989".
> > Curiosity is one thing, time to dig through the layers of ancient
> > civilizations is quite another.
> > But if anyone would like to offer a (preferably educated) guess
> > about the feasibility of  such a project, like I said, I would be
> > curious.
> >
> >
> > url:    www.econ.uiuc.edu/~roger                Roger Koenker
> > email   rkoenker at uiuc.edu                       Department of
> > Economics
> > vox:    217-333-4558                            University of Illinois
> > fax:    217-244-6678                            Champaign, IL 61820
>
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-- 
Jim Holtman
Cincinnati, OH
+1 513 646 9390

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