Re: In the Shallow End

Dan Johnson wrote:

"GreyCloud" <mist@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:MIqdner9-IB39ULZnZ2dnUVZ_uudnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Dan Johnson wrote:


I don't recall VMS docs being
especially good, though. Better than Unix man pages, sure,
but what isn't?

The DEC docs are legendary. Maybe it is because you were given a simple account and weren't given the huge set of docs to read.


If you say so. I haven't read them. But I find your account
very vague; I still don't understand what about them made
them so good.


When a document claims how an API is supposed to be used and then gives the user examples that actually work, that is very good docs.
I've seen MS docs where a few APIs were documented but when used got the old not supported error message.
DEC docs were very accurate and never misleading.


The DEC docs were very accurate, while the MS ones were not. Plus there were many needed simple functions that just didn't exist with MS.


What simple functions are those?

Simple screen management functions, to name one.
When you have to roll your own because there isn't a viable product out there, the problems start to come up very quickly with MS development tools. I've had no problems with VMS and the excellent development tools.


Ex: you can open a file as indexed and key on anything you want to do.

Yes, I know about RMS. It has no relevance to my
question that I can see.

Hah. MS never included it in their file system structure.


Of course not. It is obsolete.

Not in VMS it isn't. Works great and is very easy to use.



I found it to be a very big plus using VMS. Built right in.


MS provides relational database tools instead; much nicer
that some old ISAM.

Guffaw!!
DEC did it the best. All MS could do was to make a lame attempt at a copy.


And that's what RMS was, once you get past the
filesystem integration.


There were so many conveniences in VMS that were outright non-existent in the MS o/s that it is amazing why anyone would want to use any MS products or even UNIX products.


Could you be more specific about this? What conveniences
are you thinking of?

During program development. Even the DCL allowed for linkage of many different object modules together. Backups were easy. Their All-In-One office package was better. etc.


[snip]

MS offers several database products today for your databasing
pleasure. Modern relational databases kick the tar out of the old
indexed filesystems, like what VMS had.

Back then, MS didn't have a thing close to it.


Doesn't RMS predate MS's founding?


Yep. So was their Basic and Fortran.


And they still don't.


No-one would want to, now. Technology has
moved on.


Yes, with Apple finally getting in there, technology is finally moving along nicely again.


Why else do the real pros on Wallstreet use VMS as the main transaction engines then and not MS?


Very probably inertia. VMS is a great OS, and I don't mean
to downplay it, but if they are still using RMS files for
they transtion engines, it's because they haven't bothered
to upgrade- if not to Windows, then at least to a relational
database.

This is where a lot of people don't get it. VMS was great in disaster recovery during 9/11. If it weren't for VMS, the stock market would have been irreparably damaged. As it was, a couple of days later all of the transactions were restored. That's why VMS isn't going to disappear. IBM is another strong vendor for this market and they do play a role in other market exchanges as well. Same concept, just different vendors.
What they like to do is use the Windows desktop as data gathering frontends to these operations.


[snip]

Ya, this was a nice thing about VMS, but .NET goes
beyond it. It provides seamless interoperability for
objects, not just procedures.

.NET is a mess according to others accounts and appears to be a dying concept.


I do not know what a "dying concept" is, but it is a very
nice programming environment, and it plays a large
role in MS's future plans for Windows.


Not what I understand from some MS employees.
It seems that things are changing again.

[snip]

That stuff about HUGE, LARGE and SMALL was there
to support the 80286, and its craptacular segmented memory
model. They had to do extensions like that for all their
languages back then.

That wasn't the only kluge that MS had to bolt on.


I'm sure you're right.

[snip]

Way back in the 16-bit days, MS called their standard calling
convention (they did have one!) the "pascal convention", which
was confusing. With Win32 they renamed it "stdcall", which is
unpronouncible. Pick yer poison.

Why bother, when VMS had their stuff straight from the git-go?


Because VMS is missing a lot of stuff MS
has; like the .NET stuff I just mentioned.


VMS is an operating system, not a programming language.
They don't need the .NET paradigm because their languages are already robust, tried and proven.

[snip]

Yes. FORTRAN still has the most manic optimizers,
for numerical computing.

Guffaw!! Scientific computing appears to not be your forte.


Indeed not. Has some other language surpassed
FORTRAN while I was not looking? If so, which one?


Fortran is perfect for programs that can't afford to lose numerical accuracy. Otherwise your results will be perfect garbage.

[snip]

Back then, innovations could only occur at the
level of the whole computer. The Amiga had
nifty graphics accelerator hardware. The Mac
had a nifty GUI.

The Amiga was the only one out there that offered multi-tasking and good color graphics at that time.


That too. It was awful hard to bring that stuff to
the PC or the Mac. It was done, but it took a long,
long time. With Windows, you just drop in a card,
and install the driver for it. And it works.


MS wrote a very good basic interpreter for the Amiga. Best interpreter I've ever seen from them. Too bad they can't do a repeat now for the PC. I've yet to see multiple bit-plane animations done like the Amiga had done in its days.


The death of the Amiga was caused by poor management and their lack of understanding of NOT to enter competition with MS DOS by producing a PC clone. Had they not, they might still be around... but they are not.


I can't parse that. Certainly I agree that Commodore's
management had much to do with that companies fall.


Let me put it this way... Commodore spent too much money trying to produce a PC clone to run MS-DOS on in a saturated market. Before, they were making a decent profit.

But I submit that to save Commodore would have
taken as much effort as it did to save Apple. More
than just competant management was needed.

Apple needed Steve Jobs and obviously Jobs has succeeded greatly.
Back then, the original team that developed the Amiga, had they stayed on, would have out done MS and almost succeeded if it weren't for crappy management.


[snip]

Today an innovation can be deployed without
shipping a whole new computer to host it. This
is a great advance. And it's Windows that makes
it possible.

Windows is too steeped in backward compatibility to allow it to be trully innovative.


I find notions of "true" and "false" innovation somewhat
slippery. But the point here is not that Windows is
innovating much, but that it is a platform on which
others can innovate.

This is where they can't really innovate... all that luggage that prevents MS to push the technology further, and they have to carry it around. That's why Apple had to dump a whole paradigm to plunge ahead and take the lead. A very bold and risky move, but a successful one.


[snip]

Everybody jumped over there due to Big Blues influence. Everybody was hoping for some of that mainframe technology to filter down to the PC... it never happened.

Sure it did. It just took awhile.

Yes, over a decade... then win3.1 finally came out and bits and pieces of the main frame environment started to show up about the time NT was named win2000. But even these are not true multi-user environments,
excluding the win2003 server of course.


Hmmm. The usual count against NT in this area was that
in its first release, it was "multi-user" for CLI users, but
only one GUI user could be logged on at a time.

Not so good for timesharing.

The first Windows that supported timesharing with
a GUI for each user was NT 4, Terminal Services
Edition. That would appear to be the bit of mainframe
tech you are talking about.

It would seem so. But then, Bill had to *** in and push for moving the GDI into kernel space which made the o/s a bit unstable. It was then upto the graphics vendors to write good stable code for their grahpics cards.



Now it is steeped in buzz words that have no real meaning or connection for anyone these days.


Whadayamean, "now"? MS has always been
fond of buzzwordery.

Yes. They also changed a few meanings as well. Back in the old days a subroutine was meant as such. A function was meant as such. But no... MS had to invent a new buzz word to muddy the waters... APIs. (Application Interfaces) I preferred the older meanings as everyone back then knew what you meant.



In this, MS has muddied the waters so bad that people are now losing interest.


They've never had Apple's talent for PR, I must
admit.

[snip]

NT is here now. Hell, they even shipped the OS/2 that
they promised, though that didn't pan out too well.

It wasn't what people wanted, and were too late in delivering it.
Multi-tasking executives were available, yet MS never delivered one in the mid 80s. Even the el-cheapo Coco from Tandy had OS9 for it.
MS should have delivered multi-tasking in their 3.0 version of MS DOS.
It would have been the next logical step.


I think MS's long range planing was vidicated by events, really:
they did ship all that stuff, and they brought the industry with
them. It just took time.


But everyone was still waiting for MS to catch up where they had left off. Remember the old MP/M?

[snip]

In this case, MS went out of their way to derail Java by incorporating their own changes to Java... which led to a lawsuit.

Just to quibble: they were trying to derail Sun's
plans. They had other plans for Java, and didn't (then)
intend to kill it.

No, they didn't want to kill it... they wanted it for themselves... you know... steal by stealth.


If you like. But that would have saved Java as a technology
from the dead end into which Sun was guiding it.

I doubt that Sun was guiding it into a dead end. Sun has always promoted Java, they just didn't want MS to derail their efforts.
By letting Sun manage their own language, and also develop it for many other platforms, everyone else can standardize on Java if they want to.
Can anyone standardize on any of MS languages now? They can't because of the reliance on their o/s which is proprietary.


MS failed, of course. Java has become trapped
in its application-server niche, and will probably
die there in time.

Doesn't look like it to me. I'm encountering more Java driven websites now than I did in the past.


Too bad. It was a great idea.


It still is a great idea and many are now using Java. Apple contracted with Sun to help them integrate Java into XCode.

[snip]

All it really is ... inertia. Steve Jobs knows this so is doing the next best thing... build a better product for the masses and make it easier to use than the competitors product.


There is much in what you say, so I've snipped it. :D

But I'll object to this: Apple does *not* make computers
for the masses. They make computers for the elite.

The masses, as ever, want cheap computers and don't
care that much about quality, still less style.


That has changed. Dells offerings aren't any cheaper than Apples offerings. I do see Apples in education systems more and more these days, so it looks like the ease of use is finally becoming obvious to the masses. It'll just take a few big box stores to realize this is all.

--
Where are we going?
And why am I in this handbasket?
.