[ih] Larry Roberts & RD the first electronic mail manager software [was written in TECO on TENEX] (fwd)

[Brian E Carpenter]

On 10-Aug-23 06:16, Don Hopkins via Internet-history wrote:
> How is it even possible to tell if a TECO file is scrambled or not??!

OK, now I have to tell my only TECO story. Understand that I have never
used TECO, although I did know DEC-10 fanatics at CERN who were very
keen on it. In about 1980 my team at CERN had a Russian visitor for
a year (whose name I cannot recall, and he hardly spoke any English).
He was allegedly a wizard programmer, so we asked him to create a
syntax-driven editor for the high level language we were using
for accelerator control. One day he announced that it was ready
and offered a demonstration. At this point it became clear that the
only editor he knew was TECO, and his editor was (a) full of modes
and (b) the commands were single letters. He asked me to have
a go. As I always did in those days to test the robustness of
interactive code, I typed in a random string. Just before I hit
"Enter" he grabbed my hand, shouting "No! No!". There was "EK" in
my random string - apparently it would have destroyed everything.

We never used his code.

Sorry for the interruption.

    Brian