[mikelitoris]

For those who don’t get it: It’s referring to the ink soaked ribbon that would print characters on a piece of paper, similar to a typewriter. This is a preceding technology to digital consoles. Also why most programming languages refer to outputting a string to stdout as “print”.

[reddalo]

It's almost the same reason Windows still uses CR LF characters for new lines.

Not one character, but two: Carriage Return and Line Feed. Literally the action of moving the printer back to the beginning of the line and then the action of making the sheet of paper go "up" by one line.

[randallsquared]

That's why those characters exist, but not why Windows uses both: Unix already used LF only, and the Apple II (and Mac, for a while) used only CR. The choice to use both was, as far as I know, Gary Kildall's, in CP/M, and various DOSes including MS-DOS inherited that decision without much examination.

[bitwize]

It was a typewriter ribbon, and the type of terminal it was designed to be used with was a typewriter with communications circuitry, called a "teletypewriter". This is why the controlling terminal of Unix CLI/TUI processes is called a tty or pty (pseudo-tty).

[jibal]

Similar? It is in fact a typewriter ribbon: https://www.amazon.com/Olympia-Typewriter-Ribbon-Black-Red/d...

[TZubiri]

Man I'd love to have a computer that just prints stdout to a typewriter. Even if modern linux.

[bitwize]

Score a GE TermiNet 30 or similar teletypewriting terminal off eBay, hook it to your PC via USB-to-RS232, and Bob's your uncle. You can even do a getty to it, log in, and run shell commands: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ul-f3hPJQM