Re: Where's APL going?

Doug White wrote:

> Keywords:
> In article
> <1310c076fdcfb9189657bab2485c243e@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
> "JoeGreen" <joseph@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>There has been a raging debate in engineering circles in Canada regarding
>>M$ "software engineers". We are seeing increasing concerns for the costs
>>and consequences for "crashing software" when it brings about very serious
>>safety consequences, such as running out of gas over Gimli, or not having
>>full engine power on final approach to Toronto Pearson Airport, to name
>>only two examples with Air Canada.
>>
>>You all seem to forget that the day for the software charlatan in over,
>>the markets have discounted the dot.com into a bust, and we now are facing
>>the huge cleanup of mountains and mountains of doubtful software that
>>people are increasingly reluctant to ride on.
>>
>>Doubtful software lacking robustness and integrity is everywhere,
>>spreading like a pandemic and affecting everything it infects. In some
>>machines today, more resources are used to protect against "viruses" than
>>are used to operate the tasks at hand. Even NASA has not escaped, even
>>NASA has lost expensive spacecraft because of poorly prepared and written
>>programs that obviously did not correctly reflect the concepts of its
>>designers.
>>
>>We are passing through a profoundly "anti-intellectual" period inside most
>>North American corporations that do not value properly secured and
>>domestically produced algorithm components to modern industry. Much of
>>this has been driven by scalar profit oriented mentalities that lack the
>>foresight and vision to understand where tomorrow's meal is going to come
>>from. I am sure you who follow these hype artists on Wall Street and Bay
>>Street will not have much difficulty in spotting who they are.
>>
>>Dr. Iverson's Notation, which is the foundation of APL, has enduring
>>intellectual value and sooner or later it will re-emerge to again address
>>difficult conceptual problems that underpin our economy and our way of
>>life.
>>
>>One last point. I wonder if anyone has calculated the actual cost in lost
>>productivity that a single M$ workstation costs a company for the
>>"uploads", the "updates", the "security features", and the "patches" that
>>correct the previous "patches"? Its this loss of productivity that is a
>>mere symtom of a much deeper problem that actually stems all the way back
>>to how M$ subverted a nice little company that was building integrity into
>>their S100 systems, a company called Digital Research. Look inside InTel
>>to see the kind of corporate culture that has been spawned there by the
>>scalar minds that pretend to guide the computer industry.
>>
>>No, bullshit baffles brains only for so long, eventually smart people go
>>back and retrace their footsteps and when they do, they will find
>>Inverson's Notation brilliantly shining as when he first conceived of it
>>nearly half a century ago.
>>
>>APL will make a comeback because "cream always rises". Its time has come.
>
> One problem I see all the time is that most people's only real contact
> with computers is running garbage from M$. As a result, they don't
> realized how incredibly pissed off they should be about it. Computers &
> software were always viewed by the masses as mysterious things that
> produce magic in a box. Now everyone is convinced that a constant stream
> of bugs, poor user interfaces & viruses is just the way all
> computers work. They seem to think it's unavoidable, so they don't
> complain, and they don't take their business eleswhere. Anyone trying to
> compete with the bloatware factory in Oregon is going to be in trouble
> because the relative intangible of reliability isn't something they shop
> for, especially because they assume it doesn't exist.
>
> I heard several years ago the Bill Gates's next big push was to reduce
> total "cost of ownership" of M$ products. The fact that he hasn't
> scrapped the whole mess & started over suggests he gave up.
>
> One by one, the non-M$ products that actually WORKED have been replaced
> at my company. We are now required to use Explorer instead of Netscape
> or Firefox, and they've replaced Eudora with Outlook. As a result, my
> computer grinds to a halt several times a day, I get a steady stream of
> errors from various programs, and at least once a week the IT crowd
> downloads another "patch" into my system so I have to re-boot.

Funny, a few minutes ago I hit a Web site by accident (miskeyed the address)
and my non M$ box ground to a halt. On the other hand Internet Explorer
digested it just fine.

If you're getting "a steady stream of errors from various programs" and your
computer "grinds to a halt several times a day" then you need to find out
why and fix it, not just accept that that's the way it is with Microsoft.
As for patches, you'd be happier if they just sent you a recompiled Linux
kernel that required you to reboot? But that brings the question of why
they aren't using the remote management capabilities to reboot the machine
for you in the wee hours.

Sorry, but it seems to me that your real gripe is with your IT department
that is not doing its job and not with Microsoft.

> M$ has
> crippled the DOS support in the newer Windows

Actually, they have removed DOS completely. And it is not "in the newer
Windows", it is in the NT family--the same limitations have been there
since the early '90s and if you have applications that do not work on NT
that's the fault of the developers of those applications--Microsoft told
them it was coming, repeatedly, and yet the software developers continued
to develop for a moribund platform.

> , and now several legacy
> programs I used to rely on (written in APL) don't work as well as they
> used to.

This is one of the costs of progress--it's not possible to have complete
MS-DOS compatibility in a multiuser multitasking operating system with
protected storage and memory and controlled access to privileged
instructions.

Funny how the same people who complain most bitterly about how Microsoft's
systems are not secure and reliable are also the first ones to complain
bitterly when tightened security aimed at increasing reliability breaks one
of their applications.
>
> Doug White

--
--John
to email, dial "usenet" and validate
(was jclarke at eye bee em dot net)
.

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