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Amoeba is an ongoing research project. It should be thought of as a platform for doing research and development in distributed and parallel systems, languages, protocols and applications.

WHAT IS AMOEBA?

Amoeba provides the necessary mechanism for doing both distributed and parallel applications, but the policy is entirely determined by user-level programs. For example, both a traditional (i.e. sequential) ‘make’ and a new parallel ‘amake’ are supplied.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_algebra>

In database theory, relational algebra is a theory that uses algebraic structures with a well-founded semantics for modeling the data, and defining queries on it.

Although it provides some UNIX emulation, and has a definite UNIX-like flavor (including over 100 UNIX-like utilities), it is NOT a plug-compatible replacement for UNIX.

Amoeba is intended for both ‘distributed’ computing (multiple independent users working on different projects) and ‘parallel’ computing (e.g. one user using 50 CPUs to play chess in parallel).

https://youtu.be/NgY0QcUjtYE

To the casual user, an Amoeba system looks like a single old-fashioned time-sharing system.

forests don't either

/pay @2385 $2.18

h/t @2385 for showing me this beauty

Amoeba is a general-purpose distributed operating system. It is designed to take a collection of machines and make them act together as a single integrated system.

In general, users are not aware of the number and location of the processors that run their commands,nor of the number and location of the file servers that store their files.

It should be of interest to educators and researchers who want the source code of a distributed operating system to inspect and tinker with, as well as to those who need a base to run distributed and parallel applications.

In February 1991, after just over a year of development, I decided to post to USENET. The rest is in the Misc/HISTORY file.
https://www.bitcoinfiles.org/t/a6a77b4591ba2218f28631c3da55273600d08e30e52659967f416cd661beae1d

During the 1989 Christmas holidays, I had a lot of time on my hand, so I decided to give it a try.

Why was Python created in the first place?

I was working in the Amoeba distributed operating system group at CWI. We needed a better way to do system administration than by writing either C programs or Bourne shell scripts, ...

... since Amoeba had its own system call interface which wasn’t easily accessible from the Bourne shell. My experience with error handling in Amoeba made me acutely aware of the importance of exceptions as a programming language feature.

During the next year, while still mostly working on it in my own time, Python was used in the Amoeba project with increasing success, and the feedback from colleagues made me add many early improvements.

I had a number of gripes about the ABC language, but also liked many of its features. It was impossible to extend the ABC language (or its implementation) to remedy my complaints – in fact its lack of extensibility was one of its biggest problems.

I had extensive experience with implementing an interpreted language in the ABC group at CWI, and from working with this group I had learned a lot about language design.

I realized that it would be foolish to write an Amoeba-specific language, so I decided that I needed a language that was generally extensible.

This is the origin of many Python features, including the use of indentation for statement grouping and the inclusion of very-high-level data types (although the details are all different in Python).

It occurred to me that a scripting language with a syntax like ABC but with access to the Amoeba system calls would fill the need.

I had some experience with using Modula-2+ and talked with the designers of Modula-3 and read the Modula-3 report. Modula-3 is the origin of the syntax and semantics used for exceptions, and some other Python features.

woah
https://docs.python.org/3/faq/general.html#why-was-python-created-in-the-first-place

i made it