Re: In the Shallow End

"GreyCloud" <mist@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:G9Cdnc7zxOKe0XzZnZ2dnUVZ_tKdnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Dan Johnson wrote:
You are still being quite vague.

It has been my experience a long time ago. Vague in your instance means
you have no context to VMS or UNIX of that era.

It seems to me that if your memory fails you, you
are not to blame, but you should probably not try to
use it as a stick to beat MS with.

I may say that I find that MS docs are quite accurate, and
they do specify which platforms each API is implemented
for. And their samples seem to work, such as I've tried.

MS docs are not accurate. Ever look at the DOCS in VS 6.0?

Yes.

Terrible. Worse than their previous offerings... and their latest is a
pile of words with no organization.
I checked out their latest VS C/C++ offering and their docs were in pretty
sad shape as docs go.

No. They are quite good. I'll stand on that until you
can be a little less vague in your accusations.

[snip]
It's got console support too, if you find the graphical
stuff to sophisticated.

Heh. Most of their APIs are way too clumsy to use in an efficient manner.
Most programmers just have to put up with that junk. I feel sorry for
those chaps.

The rest of the world seems to be able to make good
use of MS's APIs. I wonder why you cannot.

DOS was kinda lame on this score, but MS's
products have got a lot better since then.

Not really, just more to go thru. How anybody can code with
their tools is amazing to say the least.

These comments make me wonder if you actually
expect anyone to believe a word you say.

[snip]
What "viable product" is missing for you? There's an awful lot of
stuff out there for Windows, after all. And what 'problems' come
up very quickly with MS development tools?

At this current point in time, you can go out and buy anything you want in
the generic sense of the word. But when you work for DOD, then you are in
the realm of custom programming for a particular function. You won't find
anything for sale out there. And again, MS tools are not all that good.
The best stuff was written on VMS for JSTARS and also the Starwars
project.

I begin to think you have never actually done any
of this stuff, and that's why you can produce no specifics.

[snip[
It is obsolete on any platform. It *works*, sure,
but lots of obsolete stuff still works. The industry
has moved on from ISAMs.

In most instances, ISAM is very adequate for custom work.
If you want a decent database manager, you can get them for VMS from
Oracle or Sybase. And even at that, they hook into the core file
structure that makes their life so much easier.

I do not see how they can do that and still provide
ACID transactions.

I expect that they do not, but work like any
database anywhere else.

Even MS used DEC equipment into the 90s before having to dump DEC when DEC
sold out to Compaq.

Great guys, DEC. Great products.

But that doesn't mean that the industry never
moves on; they don't stay the best forever.

Nothing ever does.

[snip]
No. MS did not copy RMS because nobody wants that now;
people who proper relational database systems with SQL
support, transaction integrity, stored procedures, trigger,
constraints, the works.

They couldn't copy it because they know that they'd get nailed by DEC at
that time or Compaq back in the 90s or HP today. It isn't one of those
things they can incorporate.

They didn't let that stop them back in the day. :D

Face it, your beloved RMS is obsolete today.

[snip]
Backups were easy.

Are Windows backups hard?

Yes, as the UI was not consistent or obvious.
I had to use the IOMEGA backup utilities instead with their tape drive.

Were you using NT 4's backup?

They replaced that in Windows 2000 with
a cut-down version of Veritas' product.

Much nicer.

[snip]
What was the name of this office package?
I'd like to look it up.

What was the name of VMS's all-in-one
Office package? I'd like to look it up.

[snip]
Though I doubt not that VMS was doing this
before SQL Server was!

The situation was fault tolerance and recovery. VMS excells at this.

You don't need fault tolerance to have your system
back up in 'a couple of days'. That's "build a new
machine and restore backups" time!

[snip]
You are quite mistaken about this. You'd actually
be better off with C#, and much better off with
COBOL, if you want maximum accuracy.

No, you are sadly mistaken. This is Fortrans forte.

I am not mistaken. Fortran is *fast*, not accurate.

C# won't check for bounds in complex arrays.

Yes it will.

C# won't check for numerical accuracy thru large loops.

No language can do that.

However C# provides some very large
data types.

Neither will COBOL. COBOL isn't suited for scientific applications.
C# is not certified FIPS.

COBOL is very much too slow for FORTRAN-style
apps, but it allows you as much precision as
you want.

That has made it very popular for financial
and business apps where speed matters not,
but accuracy is everything.

Fortran uses floating point binary numbers for
its data types, because they are fast. But their
accuracy problems are well known and serious.

Wrong again. Obviously, you aren't techically aware of what Fortran is.
Do you know what the IEEE floating point specs are?

Yes. They are floating point binary number formats
that have all kind of accuracy problems.

I know they have things like denormalized numbers,
but that adds a tiny amount of accuracy, and you
pay for it with even more unpredictability.

DEC Fortran used several specs for certain instances... Like the G-Float,
or H-Float. There is a lot more to fortran than you realize.
If Fortran is so dead, then why did Intel bother to produce the 2003
standard?

Fortran isn't dead. But it's about speed, not accuracy.

[snip]
This is an interest allegation. What 'whole paradigm'
has Apple dumped?

The PPC paradigm... and the Motorola paradigm.

Those are not paradigms. One is an instruction set, the
other a company.

[snip]
They were right to go with the kernel-GDI implementation;
it was a lot faster, and at the time that was critical.

Guffaw!! And now Allchin is getting it out of kernel space. Wish they'd
make up their minds, eh?

Computers are much, much faster now. They figure if Apple
can get away with all-software rendering in userspace,
they can too.

Besides, Apple has finally found a way to do a shared
graphics engine that is stable- it doesn't take down the
whole OS if one drawing operation fails.

You think MS wouldn't copy that? Ha.

[snip]
But the customers do not, as a rule, like being rushed
from platform to platform. As a matter of fact, they hate
it passionately.

They do? Then we should just hold off Vista for another decade. Wouldn't
want to stress out those people with such a drastic change.

There's a plan than many an IT department would
get behind!

[snip]
Actually, they can standardized on C# if they want to.

No one can and it isn't advisable. If they did, MS would just come along
and redefine the standard again.... this is called moving the goal posts.

They can do that, but so can Sun, and at least MS has to
go through the ISO committee to do it.

[snip]
Think of the Caddilac Cimmaron. A rebadged
Chevy Cavalier which badly damaged Caddilac's
brand.

Car analogies aren't all that good.

Yeah, but I haven't done one in months....

[snip]
Not the Mac Pro. It is priced well for the power, and Dell cost a tad
more in that arena. So considering a $2.4k price tag I consider it a
decent deal.

Oh, that's different. That's not a cheap computer
but a very good one, sold at a premium.

It's not like Caddilac has to be more expensive
than Lexus; but they had better not step into
Chevy's turf.

[snip]


.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: In the Shallow End
    ... You've never used fortran so obviously, again, you don't know what you are ... it wasn't extensions but the 2003 FORTRAN ... standard you were talking about. ...
    (comp.sys.mac.advocacy)
  • Re: reading more data than the record size (RECL)
    ... end snip ... My old compiles also write and read correctly with the subroutine I ... This overhead is there to allow Fortran ...
    (comp.lang.fortran)
  • Re: In the Shallow End
    ... Not a problem on Fortran. ... I'm vindicated about how crappy M$ products and languages really are. ... Doesn't matter if they are not standard in other languages, ...
    (comp.sys.mac.advocacy)
  • Re: OT: FORTRAN
    ... (snip about ENCODE AND DECODE perhaps?) ... did not include internal I/O, mixed-mode arithmetic, any way to detect end-of-file in a read, multiple integer precisions, etc. ... Many compilers had extensions for these, but they were not standard FORTRAN -- nor were the extensions consistent across the various vendors. ...
    (comp.lang.pl1)
  • Re: Drag it to the trash...
    ... VMS was a minicomputer OS, and was aimed at much more ... DOS batch files are at least much simpler than DCL. ... He finds *lots* of bugs in Windows. ...
    (comp.sys.mac.advocacy)
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