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Retrocomputing

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    'A touch' may be a slight thing, but it doesn't follow that 'to touch' is necessarily slight. After you've broken something with your heavy-handedness, I might well retort "I told you not to touch it". /signed/ An Englishman. Commented Jun 11 at 20:56
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    I'm going to have to assert nationality on this one. Commented Jun 11 at 21:59
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    "The minds behind Unix weren't about who created the longest function names, but compact readable code." Many of us computer users from the 1970s were still using clunky electromechanical terminals, so not typing extra characters was a bonus. Commented Jun 12 at 2:41
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    Ken Thompson was once asked what he would do differently if he had to do it again. He said "spell creat with an e". He meant two e's of course. It's the most annoying abbreviation in the whole of Unix. Commented Jun 12 at 7:45
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    @phuclv - the length of a command should be inversely proportional to how often you need to type it. Commented Jun 12 at 17:45