Technology · 2
What key advantage did Ken Thompson's 1973 rewrite of Unix in C give the operating system over its original assembly-based version?
Answer
Portability across different computer hardware
Because C code could be compiled for many machine architectures, the 1973 rewrite let Unix run on systems beyond the original PDP-7 and PDP-11, establishing the modern concept of portable software.
💡 Did you know?
Unix was originally written in assembly language, but Ken Thompson rewrote it in C in 1973 to make it portable—creating modern software portability.
Other options people guess
- Faster processing speed
- Reduced memory usage
- Built-in network security
Topics
- unix
- c-language
- software-history
- 1970s
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