Re: language marketing question, was Re: What is wrong with OO ? (& RSX-11M ...)

Re: language marketing question, was Re: What is wrong with OO ? (& RSX-11M ...)

[Rex Reges]

I caught this tidbit from an article which is now out of date:

> 
> In article <32F7A06E.17540175@ulst.ac.uk>
>            jg.campbell@ulst.ac.uk "Jonathan G. Campbell" writes:
> >
> > Sorry to draw the thread further away, but I must agree wholeheartedly
> > with Robert -- except in one small detail: 'cat's ass' doesn't translate
> > to too much on this side of the pond, but I assume that it's
> > complimentary; for RSX-11M can imagine far more appropriate animals and
> > also more appropriate body parts. When I came to it from Prime DOS-VM
> > (PRIMOS) -- which like UNIX also had MULTICS ancestry -- I found it
> > almost intolerable, for example, during simple editing I recall having
> > to become aware of some crass implementation detail like 'segments'; for
> > any serious work, a PDP 11/34 was effectively single user.
> >
> > At the same time, DEC had TOPS-10, -20, so, although these were not
> > written by DEC, they had no excuse for continuing with a lemon like
> > RSX-11M. Even when they produced the VAX, and VAX-VMS -- under pressure
> > from Prime! -- it, too, remained inferior to the Prime product, and to
> > UNIX.
> >
> > My great regret is that from 1980 to 1995 I had to tolerate the likes of
> > VAX-VMS and MS-DOS.
> >

One wonders why you want to compare motorcycles (RSX-11M) to freight
trains
(MULTICS).  Why not compare MULTICS to its peers: IBM-360, CDC Cyber 70s
and
the like?  After all the PDP 11/34 fit into an 18" rack and MULTICS 
systems used up a whole room.

The PDP 11/34 was exceptionally good at some things, including price and
real-time response.  I could respond to an interrupt and have 4K of 
data transferred to disk within 500 microseconds.  It's hard to get 
any computer to consistently wake up inside of a millisecond even today.

It's too bad that DEC didn't give away RSX-11M rights back in the late
70's 
as an alternative to Unix.  I think there were aspects of RSX-11M that
are quite useful (e.g. events instead of signals).

I wouldn't say the PDP 11/34 was single user, but it certainly wasn't
good for much more than two or three users.

Unfortunately, I cannot comment on PRIME - I am not familiar with it. 
Even after reading Jonathan's news article, I still have no notion
as to why PRIME is worthy of praise other than any system by DEC
is intolerable to Jonathan and full of crass implementation
details.

-- 
Rex Reges                      or you can call me The Fixer 
Systems Analyst                or you can call me The Lawyer
Lockheed Martin, M&DS          or you can call me The Doctor
(610)354-5047                  or you can call me Rexasaurus