Re: ancient OS history, ARM is sort of channeling the IBM 360

On Thu, 27 Jun 2024 09:14 +0100 (BST), John Dallman wrote:

Don't forget that the original use case for Unix was document
production, where record-based i/o is not very useful.

Thinking of the kinds of documents: consider that, well into the 1980s and
1990s, sending out letters to mailing lists was a common scenario, and
that requires the ability to handle both text (the letter form) and
database (the address list) functions, and merge the two.

That’s “document production”, but it probably doesn’t count as “technical
document production” (manuals, teaching material etc).