----BEGIN CLASS---- [13:58] #startclass [13:58] Robin Schubert [13:58] Roll Call [13:58] Saikat Dey [13:58] <_RicharD> Mayank gupta [13:58] Anu kumari Gupta [13:58] pavan yejare [13:58] Mohit [13:58] Suraj Ghimire [13:58] Ashwani Kumar Gupta [13:58] Messi fC [13:58] Balaji [13:58] Robin Schubert [13:58] Mohd Omama [13:58] Abhinav Shirur [13:58] Kshitij [13:58] neha kandpal [13:58] Atul kumar [13:58] Akshay Gaikwad [13:59] Nikita Kotak [13:59] Deepika Upadhyay [13:59] Shivam Singhal [13:59] yurii pylypchuk [13:59] sharon [13:59] Mayur khomane [13:59] Samridhi Agarwal [13:59] Akash pathak [13:59] Aniket uttam [13:59] Razy Kased [13:59] Gaurav Sitlani [13:59] kumar vipin yadav [13:59] Vamsi Krishna [13:59] pooja kumari singh [13:59] Jason Braganza [13:59] Mohsin Mumtaz [13:59] Bhavin Gandhi [14:00] pradhvan bisht [14:00] Any question related to the rst session last week? [14:00] .clearqueue [14:00] kushal: Error: "clearqueue" is not a valid command. [14:01] clearqueue [14:01] avik mukherjee [14:01] ! [14:01] Soumam Banerjee [14:01] next [14:02] Why '-' is used both for section and subsection? [14:02] ashwanig, It can be used in any place, but based on where did you use it first time. [14:02] Roll call-Anuja Agarwal [14:02] kushal, ok understood [14:02] ashwanig, if you first time use it for section, you can keep using it for section in the file. [14:03] Roll call - Mannu Gupta [14:03] kshithij iyer [14:03] Any other question? [14:04] And some section symbols were hendering to h7, h8 tags in html [14:04] Why was that? [14:04] s/hendering/rendering [14:04] ashwanig, Read about HTML tags :) [14:04] ! [14:04] next [14:04] ! [14:05] ! [14:05] next [14:05] In table, Few cells got grey background and fee remains as it is. Why ? [14:05] other than emphasise, can we do bold or underline? [14:06] rollcall: Himanshu Awasthi [14:06] ikshitij, that depends on the HTML CSS [14:06] Atul Krishna [14:07] ! [14:07] avik_, Have you read the restructuredtext reference document? [14:07] kushal, the slides you game? [14:07] ! [14:07] *gave? [14:07] avik, No [14:08] kushal, can you please tell me what else to read? [14:08] avik_, Let me ask a different question, have you read the whole document/presentation? [14:08] avik_, and the links given in that? [14:08] yes [14:08] ooo, the links at the end, no [14:08] Are you sure? [14:09] avik_, Then first read that [14:09] http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/ref/rst/restructuredtext.html [14:09] next [14:09] got the answer. :) [14:09] ok [14:09] avik: this: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/ref/rst/restructuredtext.html [14:09] next [14:10] next [14:10] question already answered [14:10] How to implement doctest blocks? [14:10] anuGupta, implement means? [14:10] On Friday I also said that we will look into doctest later when we learn Python. [14:10] How does it works? [14:11] Ok [14:11] sorry my net connection got disconnected [14:11] next [14:13] Sorry, I missed the beginning. Can someone please tell me the topic? [14:13] adas0496, kushal answering question from last class [14:13] adas0496 follow. [14:14] im_mohsin: skarpy: okay. thanks. [14:16] On 30th June, Gnome project did a tweet. https://twitter.com/gnome/status/880601488346632194 [14:16] To that there were various different replies, a few of them are like this one https://twitter.com/BrendanClemmer/status/880777686033076224 [14:17] As a reply Miguel De Icaza made this particular tweet: https://twitter.com/migueldeicaza/status/880813770653782017 [14:18] Please have a look at the reply. [14:19] Tell me what do you think about the comment from Miguel? [14:19] Roll call Ravindra Lakal [14:19] rollcall: Shashank Kumar [14:20] kushal, what does "ship software" mean? [14:21] I feel its right that people stood for the community. [14:21] Abhishek Das [14:21] I didn't know that Gnome and FSF are political movements [14:22] adas0496, Okay. [14:22] Like any political movement, free and open source software are meant for good. [14:22] Miguel was right. We code and work as a community. Seems only fair we stand for other’s rightts [14:22] I'm thinking if Aaron Swartz was alive, he would have really supported that statement. [14:22] i am not in twitter [14:22] And we should take a stand for those who contribute to these movements. [14:22] I couldn't really understand the tweet [14:22] And done much more. [14:22] jiteshpabla, Okay. [14:23] i think gnome is right cause community is made of people, so what good is a community if it can't stand for people. [14:23] To effectively realize the goals of FS movement, however, political support is necessary [14:23] avik, search about what does it mean by shipping software. [14:23] Free software is a movement by the people and for the people and Gnome is a free software so there is nothing wrong if they care for such issues [14:23] jasonbraganza, yes absolutely [14:23] I think he(miguel) is right as in the immigration ban gnome is showing support and open source community is all about different people helping and building communites that function as a whole. [14:24] I think it should be choice of Gnome and if they are doing it for community's welfare then people should not be against it. [14:24] Roll Call: Arush [14:24] kushal: I think, that's right! A community doesn't only mean for working together but also supporting each other ! [14:26] Okay. [14:26] I think, supporting some people from community during their hard time is not a bad thing [14:27] we come together without checking the religion and origin of other people and that is what matters; contributing and collaborating and achieving goals together [14:27] bhavin192: hard time? [14:27] To know about the history of hacking and Free Software movement, we have to go back to 1955-1956, to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). [14:27] TX-0 (pronounced tixo) was an early, fully transistorized computer and contained a then-huge 64K of 18-bit words of magnetic core memory. [14:28] samridhia, i feel standing for ones right is not a choice. They did it for showing that contribution and collaboration of every member is only way forward for a inclusive community [14:28] t was located on the second floor of building 26, at the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE), at MIT [14:28] avik_ shipping "anything" means delivering it to someone (customer) ! (As per my knowledge) [14:28] (which later spun off to become the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab). [14:28] Before this computer, they had access to IBM computers (which were very restrictive in nature). [14:29] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TX-0 this is the computer. [14:29] ! [14:30] People who did not have official access to this computer started figuring out better ways to get access. [14:30] next [14:30] kushal, restrictive in the sense? [14:30] ok proceed [14:30] :) [14:31] soumam007__, like they did not have any access to the source code of the operating system. [14:31] ok [14:32] Many people who booked time to access the computer may have skipped sleep at nights to gain access (think of access times like 3 AM), [14:32] and an enthusiastic group of people (mostly from the Tech Model Railroad Club) would try to access the computer in that free time. [14:32] Working on this computer became a way of life. [14:32] Groups of people started staying back whole nights on the computer, and they made sure no time was wasted. [14:33] Is this clear till now? [14:33] yes [14:33] yes [14:33] yes [14:33] yes [14:34] yes [14:34] yes [14:34] yes [14:34] yes [14:34] yes [14:34] yes [14:34] yer [14:34] yes [14:34] Yes [14:34] Yes [14:34] sorry yes [14:34] Yes [14:34] yes [14:34] yes [14:34] Yes [14:34] kushal, what people actually doing with there access? [14:35] im_mohsin, Writing code to improve different tools, things which were not possible before. [14:35] This brings to these people who are known as hackers in this early days of computing. [14:35] That also brings us to anther big term. [14:35] Hacker Ethic [14:35] From Steven Levy’s book: [14:36] >Access to computers—and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works—should be unlimited and total. Always yield to the Hands-On Imperative! [14:36] yes [14:36] This boils down to the idea of a world, where you can fix things. If a hacker thinks something is wrong, they can open it up, and fix it. [14:36] You can build exciting things on top of existing knowledge. And, to [14:36] do so, hackers believed that … [14:36] > All information should be free. [14:37] The only way this was possible by exchanging information in a free manner. There was to be no boundary around information. [14:37] Now, MIT has a big history many amusing hacks by its students. [14:38] If you want to know about the history of famous hacks in MIT, have a look at http://hacks.mit.edu/ [14:39] i was literally reading about this before class, what a coincidence :) [14:40] Next [14:40] kushal cant understand the website [14:40] soumam007__, which website? [14:41] soumam_ - i'll explain after class [14:41] the ink you just shared [14:41] hacks.mit.edu [14:41] s/ink/link [14:41] ok jasonbraganza [14:42] ### The PDP-1 days [14:42] In 1961, a new computer from DEC was delivered to MIT, the PDP-1. [14:42] The [14:42] price for this computer was much lower compared to the TX-0. [14:43] $12000 iirc [14:43] dollars? [14:43] $ is dollars [14:43] It was installed in the room right next to the TX-0. [14:44] The hackers did not like the existing tooling (assembler) for PDP-1, and so over a weekend, a few people got together and converted the TX-0 assembler for use with the new computer. [14:45] They started working from Friday, by Monday morning, they had it ready. [14:45] Between themselves they worked 240+ hours on that. [14:45] It was said, that were a similar effort made by the computer industry, it would have taken months of effort [14:46] Because of all the open information available, the hackers of MIT managed to showcase the value of the hacker ethic. [14:46] * all of the [14:46] Amazing. :o [14:46] The source code of various programs was kept in drawers in the lab, for any one to access. [14:46] People used to pick up work done by others, then improve the code, and put the new improved tapes right back in the drawer. [14:47] 240+ hours of works. That's possibly the huge commitment by these hackers :o [14:47] This way everyone got the chance to learn from work of others and their improvements. [14:47] kushal, And that [14:48] Now think about some problem you worked on, kept the tape in the drawer, went home, when you came back next day morning, someone magically improved the code, and you have new version there. [14:48] 's how we humans develops. [14:48] kushal: sorry sent by mistake. [14:49] ### The Chess Story [14:49] After making a connection between the PDP-1 and the TX-0, he hackers invited Prof. John McCarthy to sit in front of it, and play a game of chess. [14:49] The information was transferred to the TX-0 one bit at a time, where they had also invited another professor to sit. Both of them were told, they were playing against the computer. [14:49] :) [14:50] Only after playing the [14:50] first few moves, McCarthy tried to find out the reason behind slow output, and then discovered the other professor in the TX-0 room (after following the cable connecting the computers). [14:52] ### Spacewar! [14:52] Steve Russell was one of the hackers who had used the TX-0 before and was then working on the PDP-1 system. [14:52] He had the idea of making an application (a game) which would use the display system and some futuristic sci-fi story of two spaceships battling each other. [14:53] But, to do so, he would require better sine-cosine routines (think about functions) for the display to work. [14:54] Kotok (who worked on the assembler), went to visit the DEC folks in a nearby city, and someone there provided him with the source code for the sine-cosine routines. [14:55] ^^^ Now take some time to think about this, people just went to ask the folks from the company, and they shared the code to solve the problem. [14:55] After many intense six-eight hour sessions, in February 1962, they had the initial game ready. [14:56] 2 ships firing torpedoes at each other. But, as usual, the hackers at the lab thought of various improvements they could make, and the game got many new features over time. [14:56] People would stand in line to play the game (whenever the system was free). [14:56] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Spacewar!-PDP-1-20070512.jpg [14:56] ^^ that is the picture of an original display. [14:57] firing how? no display nothing? [14:57] soumam007__, Have you opened the photo link? [14:58] If you have any questions, this is a good time to raise those. [14:58] Is that a oscilloscope screen in the picture? [14:59] sorry kushal my irc is getting disconnected frequently i missed the photo link [14:59] kushal, the DEC guys gave the routine without any resistance? [14:59] soumam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacewar!#Gameplay [14:59] im_mohsin, Nope, they were happy to help. [15:00] ihp_, some first generation CRT dispaly [15:00] im_mohsin, They even provided hardware parts to people at times. [15:00] How was pdp-1 different from tx-0? [15:01] ahole[m], read the wikipedia page for both the computer :)) [15:01] kushal, the 1st Version control system came in 1982. How did these guys make a stable os for the pdp-1 in 3 days without it? [15:01] i just saw the pic of Vint Cerf playing that game. [15:01] kushal: okay. [15:01] skat-sd, They made an assembler, using code in paper. [15:02] http://www.masswerk.at/spacewar/ this is the game inside our browser, feel free play as much as you want after the session. [15:02] Now, let us jump into 1970 [15:02] that was really good kushal and spacewar went on to become the classic game of the century :) [15:02] im_mohsin, software was not sold commercially back then [15:03] they were basically experiments people would do and share with each other [15:03] hahah they were too brilliant [15:03] A freshman (math) student from Harvard, Richard M. Stallman heard about the AI computer lab at MIT. [15:03] He visited the place and found out how open the lab was (compared to Harvard’s computer labs). [15:03] MIT was famous for the open culture. [15:04] He also managed to get a job there to write a PDP-11 simulator to run on the lab’s PDP-10. [15:04] From the very next week, he started visiting the place regularly and working on open terminals. [15:04] He was introduced to hackers from the lab. [15:05] He also liked the idea where hackers would do anything to keep access to the terminals open. [15:05] That included picking the locks of [15:05] the doors, removing ceiling tiles, or climbing walls. [15:05] brb, (another meeting in another channel), please continue discussing [15:05] siddhesh: then who started this trend of selling source code or software ? [15:05] Even though [15:05] there were many Academics in the AI Lab, the hacker ethic was accepted as a norm. [15:06] Okay, I have couple of minutes [15:06] Stallman started visiting the lab routinely every weekend. [15:06] A group of hackers used to go out together for dinner (mostly Chinese), and they used to come back and hack through the night. [15:06] So, was the hacker ethic still limited to MIT? [15:06] And sometimes at 3 AM [15:06] they used to again go out for more Chinese food :) [15:06] Many of the hackers used to stay up all night including Stallman. [15:06] ikshitij, I don't know TBH, it probably started with hardware companies bundling OSes with their machines without source code [15:07] ikshitij, but then software as a sole business was something microsoft created and perfected [15:07] With who all here stays up late night and hack on things. [15:07] siddhesh, i dont think software were not sold commercially back then. They were and licensing was not mostly to protect there creation [15:07] During the 1970s, computer usage in the labs changed slowly. Many other users (of the other Operating Systems) slowly started adding security features to their systems, which included having password controlled access. [15:07] The MIT computer science department did install such a system in 1977. [15:08] Stallman managed to get access to the source code and wrote another program which would then decrypt the password. [15:08] He mailed the users with a message to change their password to a “carriage return” (just pressing the enter key). [15:08] All most one-fifth of the staff agreed to this, and they had empty passwords. [15:09] Stallman joined MIT as a Physics grad student. He spent months in the Lab (he had no apartment at the time). [15:09] im_mohsin, yes, but holding back source code wasn't the norm originally, because the source code was essentially paper tapes and punch cards :) [15:09] By October 1975, he left his grad classes, and started working in the AI Lab full time. [15:09] The lab was filled with plenty of such individuals, who never finished their academic degrees. [15:09] s/wasn't the norm/was not possible/ [15:09] The homegrown operating system for the Lab's PDP-10 was called the Incompatible Time Sharing system (ITS). [15:10] The name was pun on the lab’s original operating system, the Compatible Time Sharing System (CTSS). [15:10] ITS was written and maintained by the folks in the Lab (from PDP-6 days). [15:11] You can see that they did not miss any chance to have fun, if possible, even in names (which continued through out the history of hacks). [15:11] brb (meeting chat in the other channel). [15:14] How did that culture affect Academics? [15:14] Did people tend to drop out from their courses? [15:15] gauravsitlani_: yes, it did affect their academics and in some cases people never completed their degrees. [15:15] gauravsitlani_, it coincides with the hippie movement of the 60s and 70s, so the campus was essentially full of the 'free thinkers' [15:15] gauravsitlani_, Many did not. [15:15] gauravsitlani_, Which is still a case for many we know, even in India. [15:16] kushal: what type of language they were using ? [15:16] also it would be incorrect to correlate non-completion of degrees with hacker culture. That is more of an American thing, where society is far more pragmatic than any other place like India or even parts of Europe [15:16] kushal, can you point somecases here in India? [15:16] im_mohsin, later after the session. [15:16] sure [15:17] for example, you will see far fewer such stories of dropoutsin EU despite some stellar hackers there (like Linus Torvalds!) [15:17] siddhesh: true [15:18] siddhesh, those kinds of things should be encouraged in colleges. [15:19] ikshitij - assembly for the most part. (directly coding to the machine with the intructions given by the vendor) [15:20] kushal How did it spread out of MIT,to even bigger hacker culture ? [15:20] ikshitij, you can see the source code of spacewar [15:20] The society was much more relaxed and forgiving back then for this to happen [15:20] there were a number of programming languages by the 70s I think: lisp, C, fortran [15:21] siddhesh - was thinking early 60s :) sorry! [15:21] jasonbraganza, paper tapes, punch cards and a keyboard with 1s and 0s maybe :P [15:22] yup :) [15:22] no but in all seriousness you're right, other than paper tapes and punch cards you basically had to write an assembler in machine language and then load that assembler to assemble whatever program you wrote in assembly [15:22] siddhesh, keyboard with two switches xD [15:24] bhavin192 - you saw the spacewar code right? that’s assembler :) [15:24] I feel communities are amazing as they help to create such culture which inculcates our desire to explore more. [15:24] gauravsitlani_, our problem here in India is very different and is increasingly becoming the problem in the US - taking up courses for the jobs and not for their interest [15:25] but that is a different topic, so lets not digress :) [15:25] Back. [15:25] The issue in gauravsitlani_ India is that [15:25] In India degree is everything. [15:26] Richard M. Stallman is also known as RMS, so for the rest of the session, I will use either of the terms. [15:26] siddhesh, i agree. In India we are having narrow approach to free thinking [15:26] siddhesh: sure that will point to a different direction now. [15:26] Next [15:26] ### TECO and the Birth of Emacs [15:27] Text Editor and COrrector was the primary editor in the AI Lab. One had to give long edit commands ending with a “end of command string” sequence. [15:27] That meant one could not see the text while editing it. [15:27] It was upgraded from the PDP-6 days, and with a special hack it used to show both the original text, and a place to enter command strings in a split screen. [15:27] Richard Stallman found a hack called “Ctrl-R” for TECO, [15:27] where by pressing those two keys, one could use the editor on a keystroke to keystroke basis. [15:27] But, it used to take only the first 5 rows on the top of the screen. [15:28] Stallman hacked it to use the whole screen, and (more importantly) anyone could now save their macros to some set of fixed keystrokes. [15:28] This created a new revolution; that of using macros. [15:28] Everyone started creating their own macro packages, and their own keystrokes. [15:30] All these macros made this scene in real life : https://xkcd.com/1806/ [15:30] This also brought the issue of too much customization, since one hacker could not sit in front of another hacker's terminal and use it. [15:31] ^^ the exact comics above :) [15:31] XD [15:31] It's hilarious :D [15:31] Guy Steele, another hacker in the lab decided to do something to solve this issue. [15:32] He started creating a chart of macro commands along with 4 different macro packages. [15:33] This project got the attention of Stallman, and he started looking into it with more attention. [15:33] Finally, this gave birth to a new project, named *Emacs*, for editing macros. [15:33] People slowly started adopting this new editor. [15:33] But, there was a good chance that people would write or develop some special features, which others would want to use. [15:33] ! [15:34] And so, in the Emacs documentation, [15:34] Stallman added a contract (he looked at it as a social contract) [15:34] saying Emacs “was distributed on a basis of communal sharing, which means [15:34] that all improvements must be given back to me to be incorporated and [15:34] distributed.” [15:34] next [15:34] Curious, who was funding all of these efforts, in addition to any additional time the researchers/hackers committed [15:34] rkased, The Lab. [15:34] Okay. [15:34] rkased, People used to work for the Lab too, they had their formal office work/research. [15:35] Plus all of these fun activities. [15:35] Cool. [15:35] stallman was what we would now call the in house devops guy [15:35] his allowed Stallman to add useful features (from the users) to Emacs, and share the improved work. [15:35] jasonbraganza, hahaha [15:35] what are macro packages? [15:35] so, basically that was the birth of pull request [15:36] im_mohsin, some piece of code which will do something (by pressing some keys together). [15:36] okay [15:36] ! [15:36] next [15:37] When you say they built an application or macros or something. How is it built? I'm not clear how these commands where understood and communicated to the computer? [15:37] I apologize for my novice computer language question. [15:38] rkased, This are the computers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDP-10 [15:39] rkased, Using paper tapes as siddhesh said before. [15:39] Got it. [15:39] rkased, and for teco or emacs, directly using the display. [15:40] Now, there are also many stories from this time [15:40] ### The Story of Pretty Printing [15:40] Steele also had the idea to add a feature that would reformat source code, so that it would more readable. [15:40] One morning he sat down at the terminal, with Stallman looking over his shoulder, and they both worked on this feature for the next 10 hours. Stallman telling, and Steele typing. [15:40] At the end they made it; within a 100 lines. [15:41] Later while describing how focused the session was, Steele said the following. [15:41] >My first thought afterward was [that] it was a great experience, [15:41] very intense, and that I never wanted to do it again in my life. [15:41] When he came out of the lab, it was already late night, he had no clue about the time he spent there working in full focused mode :) [15:42] Now, a little bit of sidestory. The Unix story [15:42] The Unix operating system grew in popularity during 1970s. [15:42] Open up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix#/media/File:Ken_Thompson_(sitting)_and_Dennis_Ritchie_at_PDP-11_(2876612463).jpg [15:42] This is a famous picture of Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie working on a [15:42] PDP-11 computer (this is most probably taken during the time they [15:42]