Hacker News Reader

Having been compelled to program Multics, I am appalled that anyone would want to resurrect it. One of the happiest days of my life was when my employer got rid of it. I think they gave it to Iran. : )

View on HN

Could you tell use something more about its flaws compared to other operating systems of the era?

Sure. While Multics was a wonderful operating system for folks who were into systems programming and similar activities, for those of us who were trying to write applications it was a nightmare. It was wonderfully flexible, but nearly impossible to understand from the application programmer's perspective. In reading the doc you'd find something you didn't understand so you'd followed the reference to the next piece of doc, and then on to the next and so on. After about 4 levels of this I'd have a headache and give up.

For all it's problems the IBM 360 was much more accessible. Initially, the doc was of little use, but by this time, IBM has its act together and there were some truly useful docs.

Multics, for all its brilliance, was nearly useless for many.

Is Multics like The Ring? You have to give it to someone else to free yourself of the curse?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com