
Interview with Bill Joy (1984) - 6ren
http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~kirkenda/joy84.html
======
atsaloli
Thank you! I really enjoyed that.

Here is a 1999 interview with Bill Joy on the design of vi:

[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/09/11/bill_joys_greatest_g...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/09/11/bill_joys_greatest_gift/print.html)

~~~
pasbesoin
In that article , George Coulouris cites a description of em linked to at the
following page:

<http://www.dcs.qmul.ac.uk/~george/history/index.html>

Unfortunately, that page is 403 and archive.org never captured a working copy
of it [1] -- in case anyone is in a position to address this.

\--

I see one copy from 2010; however, it is simply the 403 message:

[http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/...](http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/~george/history/index.html)

[http://web.archive.org/web/20100818011111/http://www.eecs.qm...](http://web.archive.org/web/20100818011111/http://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/~george/history/index.html)

~~~
georgio8
I've got the same material (and more) on my personal website at:
<http://www.coulouris.net/cs_history/em_story/> There's complete source code
for 'em' there too.

George Coulouris

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pfraze
This is really insightful read.

> _I think the wonderful thing about vi is that it has such a good market
> share because we gave it away. Everybody has it now. So it actually had a
> chance to become part of what is perceived as basic UNIX. EMACS is a nice
> editor too, but because it costs hundreds of dollars, there will always be
> people who won't buy it._

~~~
damian2000
Its hard to imagine unix without vi; I didn't realise there was a time when it
wasn't there.

~~~
pdw
Also hard to imagine paying $400 (source: <http://www.jwz.org/doc/emacs-
timeline.html>) for a text editor. Even if it's Emacs.

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dm8
It must have been one hell of a time during 60s/70s as a student at UC
Berkeley's CS dept. You had opportunity to work with folks like Joy, Thompson
etc. (who were also students) who became legends of the field by contributing
things like UNIX, BSD, vi etc.

