Saga of AMIS

(Se även Sagan om AMIS.)

T H E S A G A O F A M I S by Per "The Mad Programmer" Lindberg

ONCE UPON A TIME, there were seven little hackers who wanted to writean editor of their own. This is the saga of these seven little hackersand their editor, whose name was AMIS. And since this saga was writtenwith AMIS, it is a true story.

One night a long time ago (way back in 1980) in the castle-likebuildings of the Royal Institute of Technology in the kingdom ofSweden there was a hacker sitting in the the research lab of thedepartment for computer science and numeric analysis. He was calledKrsna by the other hackers, who also sat there in FOOLAB, as it wascalled after the swedish word FORSKNINGSLAB. The computers name wasNADJA, and she was a DECsystem-10. All the hackers liked her verymuch.

This night Krsna was very very angry. "This editor is AWFUL", hescreamed. "And not only that, but also BRAIN-DAMAGED, LOSING andBLECHEROUS!" The other hackers, who were Captain Zilog, PD,Beedee, Johnny and TMP, knew what he meant, because they too had touse the same awful editor. "What we need on this machine is EMACS",said Krsna.

The other hackers had never heard of EMACS, but agreed that the editorthey had was very bad. Also, they did not want to appear ignorant, sothey said: "Youre absolutely right, Krsna. Why dont you write one?"

"Hah, losers", said Krsna, dont you think I could write one if Itried? "Just wait! Since EMACS is written in TECO, and we do have TECOon this here machine, I can easily write a mini-EMACS in an hour!""Oh, do that", said the others, knowing very well that Krsna didnthave time for that.

But this night Krsna was REALLY irritated by VIDED, as the existingeditor was called, and he also didnt want the other hackers to thinkhe was a loser, so he immediately begun hacking away in TECO. A fewhours later he exclaimed: "Watch this!", and started his program whilethe other hackers gathered around him to watch. "Look, I can insertcharacters, and move the cursor", he said. And lo and behold! Everytime he hit a key, that character was written on the screen. Thescreen updating algorithm was new and revolutionary: first the screenwas blanked, and then the entire screen was rewritten. And every timeany single character was changed, his program rewrote the wholescreen. In 300 bauds. And sometimes not only that, because the TECOprogram had to scratch its head and ponder for a while before carryingout his commands. The other hackers started to laugh, and went back totheir own terminals.

But as soon as they sat down and continued their hacking they realizedthat perhaps Krsna was on to something after all, because they had torun VIDED, and VIDED felt even worse than before. So a few days laterthey decided to go to Uppsala, which was the village where Krsnalived, where they had EMACS on their machine. But they didnt tellKrsna the real reason for their visit, because then he would know theywere interested in EMACS after all. Instead they said: "We want to runTWENEX, INTERLISP and ZORK on your DECSYSTEM-20". "How nice, you arewelcome the next Sunday", answered Krsna.

And so the whole group crammed into Captain Zilog:s car and went toUppsala. They tried EMACS, lisped, played ZORK and had a good timecavorting around in TWENEX. EMACS proved to be bigger, faster, betterand happier than any other editor in existance. This was heaven!

During this time a wondrous thing came to NADJA: the COMteleconferencing system. Of course, in these enlightened days everyoneknows what a teleconferencing system is, but at that time it was awondrous thing indeed. And all the hackers stared running COM withgreat enthusiasm and were very, very happy. And not only the hackersin Stockholm, but also some of the hackers of the Lysator club atLinkoping University. Many entries were written in COM about lots ofthings, from assembler to zappers. In fact, COM was so successful thatsome trade unions became scared and said: "Let us forbid this evilthing, for we dont understand it". And there was a big quarrel aboutthis out in the Real World. But the hackers didnt care, and continuedtheir hacking and teleconferencing.

But then one night Krsna wrote a message and said: "Fellow hackers!Im fed up with not having EMACS on NADJA, so let us write one inPascal. We start on Sunday at noon, and by midnight we should have thefirst versions of our respective modules ready for linking."

All the other hackers, who now unsderstood how good EMACS was, becamevery happy and cheered in COM: "Yeah", "So be it", "Hooray for EMACS",and "Im coming, too!" The last was from A-STROM, a hacker fromLinkoping. He had also seen EMACS on their twenty, and realized thateverything else was bad.

So during the rest of the week some preparations for the Big Day weremade. Stacken, the hacker guild at the R.I.T, arranged an account onNadja for the purpouse, and a time and place on Sunday was agreedupon.

And finally it was Sunday, and the seven hackers arrived in a roomnear FOOLAB. All of them were late, of course, but after a few hoursthey could get started. A wild discussion commenced! The first andmost important issue, where they should have dinner, was quicklydecided upon: the default chinese was put in the event queue. And thenthe project was divided into MAIN, TTYIO, DISKIO, BUFFER, SCREEN andWINDOW. After a great chinese dinner with everything A-STROM had tocatch the last train back to Linkoping, Krsna began writing the moduledefinitions, and the rest slumped in FOOLAB reading COM. Perhapswriting an editor wasnt so easy, after all.

The next week some of the hackers begun hacking their modules anddiscussed features in COM. In COM they also resolved the NameQuestion; what should they call their editor? In the beginningeveryone called it "Editor X". Krsna wanted to call it TMACS or TEMACSas in Tiny EMACS, or XEDIT from Editor X. XEDIT turned out to be thename of a horrible editor on CDC computers. TMP wanted to call itAMIS, after "Anti-Misery", a symbol of hope for a better future. SoKrsna had to give up his suggestion, which he did after some unsportlyconvincing. To increase the confusion even more, someone offered thenew explanation that AMIS stood for "Anti-Mung Interface for Suckers".And not only that, but also "A Major Innovation in Software", whichimmediately got changed into "Software Innovation in A Major".

And then it was Sunday again, and all the hackers gathered to reviseand test their modules. Alas, no linkable modules were ready this timeeither. But the chinese dinner was as good as last Sunday.

And so the Sundays came and went. It was during this time that theyquit fumbling with the chopsticks and started using them as if theyhad been doing it all of their lifes. The alternative would have beenstarving to death.

But then one dark night, as TMP sat at home by his terminal readingCOM, he saw an entry from PD who hacked DISKIO. "Break-even pointreached", it said. For the first time a source module had been editedwith AMIS. This was a good sign, and all the AMIS hackers cheered.Soon it became clear that some of the hackers were very, very clever.For example, the screen updating which was hacked by A-STROM NEVERrewrote a portion of the screen that just happened to have the rightcharacters there. And thanks to the magic of COM, he could sit all theway out in Linkoping and hack.

One day, Krsna and Johnny disagreed about some feature in AMIS. Johnnywanted it to work in this way, Krsna in that way. Johnny kept saying"why?" when Krsna explained how he wanted AMIS to work. Then Krnsa hadan idea, and said: "Because EMACS does it that way!" Johnny jawdropped, and he could not make a sound. This was a killer comment! Andthe next time Johnny got into an argument whith Captain Zilog, he justsaid "Because EMACS does it that way!". It worked very well, and soonall the hackers started saying "Because EMACS does it that way!" whenthey wanted to put an end to a disagreement on the features of AMIS.In fact, this phrase was soon in use at all sorts of discussions,where neither AMIS nor EMACS had to be the subject. Johnny evenpainted a sign with the famous words which he hung in the terminalroom.

One day a new hacker, JMR, got angry at AMIS. "There are no searchfunctions", he said. "Youre absolutely right, JMR. Why dont youwrite one", answered the others. And to their astonishment that isjust what he did. And it was so good that they immediately put it intoAMIS so they could use it when they hacked AMIS with AMIS. So nowthere were eight little hackers hacking AMIS. And as the roumor ofAMIS spread, more and more hackers wanted to see it for themselves.And when they had seen it, they wanted to use it.

Orjan Ekeberg, who worked at the department, was one of the first. Infact, he helped Stacken with the account on NADJA, and later hacked amanual so that all the students and teachers also could use AMIS. Andlike JMR he could not keep his fingers to himself, so now AMIS alsohad command line completion, just like EMACS.

Then came the ELVIRA hackers from a nearby department, who had aPDP-11 running RSTS/E. "We also want AMIS", they said. "Go ahead, takeit" said the seven NADJA hackers. "Good luck, youll need it!" Yousee, it is impossible to run AMIS on a PDP-11, because AMIS is so big,and the PDP-11 is so small. But the ELVIRA hackers invented a thingwhich they called "the overlay hack", and so they too could run AMIS.And after the ELVIRA hackers came the VAX hackers from the physicsdepartment. "We also want AMIS", they said. "Go ahead, take it" saidthe seven NADJA hackers. The VAX hackers did not have the sameproblems as the ELVIRA hackers, and they also had a good Pascal. Sothe VMS version of AMIS soon become famous. And of course the Pascalswere a little different, which gave both groups of hackers a fewnervous breakdowns before they had sorted out the differences.

Now they had an editor they could use without getting angry at it. Butlittle did they realize how much work that remained to be done. Ifthey had, they would have given up there and then. You see, the rumourof AMIS spread and spread, and everyone wanted to look at the funnylittle editor. And so finally one day a RELEASE had to be made. Thisis when the REAL problems begun.

So one wintery Sunday all the eight hackers met to make the release.Suddenly a horrible thought struck TMP: there was no MANUAL. So he andBeedee sat down to write a manual as fast as they could. The othersfound a few bugs to be exterminated, and hacked away at those. Theydidnt know that they were fighting the dreaded LAST BUG, which, aseveryone knows, is the bug that you remove before the last bug. Timepassed, and the hackers labored into the night. So it was well aftermidnight when everyone agreed that AMIS was ready for release. Butalas, Krsna realized that a special area had to be reserved where acopy of everyting in the relese version had to be saved, just in casesomeone later had a complaint. And when the documentation hackers senttheir file off to the wizard, he gave it back and said "Wrongcharacter codes". You see, this was before the computer center decidedto use the swedish character standard. They had their own. So themanual had to be converted, and the confusion increased as the nightturned into morning. And when finally everything was sorted out, andthe release done, only a few hackers were alive. This was the worstbattle they had seen.

Of course, it wasnt quite right even then, so during the followingmonday some emergency hacks had to be done. And now the circus REALLYwent wild! Every user, luser, student, teacher and all the othersbombarded the poor hackers with bug reports, comments, helpfulsuggestions and stupid remarks. But the seven hackers didnt give in!The fixed the bugs, used COM to answer the comments, took some of thesuggestions and used the old proverb "Because EMACS does it thatway!" a lot. The AMIS release propagated with the speed of light tomany other places, and even to the kingdom of Norway.

<Sound of thunder, black clouds, wind and rain>

AMIS was a success. Yes, it was so successful that one day a man cameto the hackers and said "I want to buy it, how much do you want forit?" "Let us think", said the seven hackers, shuddering. "Sure thing,Ill be back", said the man. This was something totally unexpected.What should the hackers do? Visions of pinstriped lawyers forcing themto sign endless contracts binding them to support COBOL mode for somebook-keeping company haunted them at night. And who should get all themoney? Not they, since they had done the development with a machineowned by the school for educational purpouses. No commercial useallowed. Could they sell AMIS at all?

But then TMP had an idea. "We can let Stacken, our computer club,receive the money. Stacken is a non-profit organization." And so theystarted using their editor to draw a contract, something they had neverimagined, that first Sunday a year ago. But as they had edited the17th version of the contract, the VAX hackers yelled "Hey! What aboutus, eh?" The VAX hackers were very cross, and said that they, too, hadcontributed to AMIS. And the physics department said "Yes, and theyhave used our computer! We want some of that money, too!"

Poor little hackers! They started saying ugly words, and spent alltheir time arguing and yelling at each other instead of hacking. Ittook a long time before everyone could accept the 4711th version ofthe contract, which had now cloned into two. A deep silence fell overthe place, as the dust settled. And not much happened for severalmonths, because the man who had bought AMIS didnt pay for it rightaway. "Tax reasons", he said, and Stacken had to wait until Januarybefore a large sum of money arrived.

When the money finally came, they saw that this was not so bad anidea, after all. And so Stacken bought the hackers a great dinnerwhich has yet to be beat at one of the best restaurants in the town.Captain Zilog chose a very good wine, and PD did not give up untilhe had his fourth dessert. At last AMIS was a complete success, and sothey lived happily ever after.

The moral of this story is: never believe anything written with anEMACS-compatible editor.

And the money? Well, a few years later Stacken got the offer to buy anold DECsystem-10 (with a KA10 CPU, the first model DEC made of thattype) for 1 crown. Of course they jumped at the offer! But installingit and getting it up and running (which they finally did by the end of1985) was a bit more expensive. So the money for AMIS were put to gooduse. But that is another story.

T H E E N D

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Artikeln skriven 2009-01-17 av Learning4sharing

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