Reminiscing on 20 years using S

I realized earlier this year (2007) that it was in 1987 that I first
started using an early version of S (it was ported to VMS and was  
called
success).  That means that I have been using some variant of S (to
various degrees) for over 20 years now (I don't feel that old).

Boxing day somehow seems appropriate for this thread.  R.I.P. to all  
those old boxes
of yesteryore and the software that ran on them -- and yet there is  
always a residual  archaeological curiosity.

I discovered recently that the MIT athena network contains a circa  
1989 version
of S:  http://stuff.mit.edu/afs/athena/astaff/project/Sdev/S/  which  
made me wonder
whether there was any likelihood that one could recreate "S Thu Dec  7  
16:49:47 EST 1989".
Curiosity is one thing, time to dig through the layers of ancient  
civilizations is quite another.
But if anyone would like to offer a (preferably educated) guess about  
the feasibility of  such a project, like I said, I would be curious.


url:    www.econ.uiuc.edu/~roger                Roger Koenker
email   rkoenker at uiuc.edu                       Department of Economics
vox:    217-333-4558                            University of Illinois
fax:    217-244-6678                            Champaign, IL 61820