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The books worked. "In general, students seem to find the new courses more onerous, but much more satisfying than the previous courses," Lions dryly observed. His students describe the classes as a revelation. "He enjoyed seeing if any of us were alert enough to catch any of the few bugs or inexplicable oddities in the code as we read through it. I don't think we managed it often," remembers Lucy Chubb, now president of the Australian Unix and Open Systems Users Group (AUUG). "Serious reading of someone else's code was something that no other subject gave us." One of Lions' greatest insights was that what Thompson and Ritchie had written deserved to be studied in this way. "You will find that most of the code in Unix is of a very high standard," he wrote in an introduction to the books. "Many sections which initially seem complex and obscure, appear in the light of further investigation and reflection, to be perfectly obvious and 'the only way to fly.'" Unix was beautiful and useful and it rewarded close attention. As programmer Peter Reintjes observed, "We had acquired what amounted to a literary criticism of computer software." The implications were huge. Thompson and Ritchie's succinct and elegant code lent itself to investigation and play. Now a cadre of well-trained students was equipped to do just that. "Enhancements from institutions around the world began to be exchanged, and contributed in no small way to the growth of Unix," Rose recalls. "These two volumes made it far easier to get started with this kind of experimentation, and contributed greatly to the success of Unix during the late 1970s and early 1980s." News of the revolution trickled back to its instigators. "The first Ken and I heard of John was when the original of the 'Commentary' book arrived, I think, out of the blue," says Ritchie. "We were much impressed by the quality of the work and highly flattered by its very existence." Lions had worked hard to understand what Thompson and Ritchie had been trying to achieve. In their view, he succeeded. "After 20 years, this is still the best exposition of the workings of a 'real' operating system," Thompson has said. As much as he admires the course notes, Ritchie praises Lions' teaching still more. "Probably the most important contribution John made was to start, at UNSW and indirectly at Sydney Uni, a very strong group of Unix people, many of whom have visited or stayed here, and whom we have often visited," he says. Lions also founded the AUUG, and it is at least partly to his credit that Unix thrives in Australia to this day. (The group recently celebrated Lions' contribution with a John Lions Award for Research Work in Open Systems.) A visionary teacher, a wonderful teaching tool, a commentary drenched with wit and insight, an environment in which talented students thrived -- this is all building up to a happy ending, right? Yes and no. Even when they were first published, Lions' books were technically only available to licensees of sixth edition Unix. The operating system's new owner, Western Electric, didn't want just anyone learning the inner workings of the Unix kernel. | ||
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