Re: Market pressures for more reliable software

["Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz" <nospam@acm.org>]

Marin David Condic wrote:

> Maybe I'm just in the springtime of my senility, but that's pretty much how
> I remember it and pretty much what I was trying to describe. "distributed"
> computing was not around in the days of the ENIAC and vacuume tube
> computing - so pretty much ipso facto, "centralized" computing existed
> first. When all that existed in the entire universe were big gigundous
> computers that had to be kept in hermetically sealed rooms, people didn't
> have one of them sitting under their desk - so "centralized" computing
> existed and "distributed" computing didn't.

ENIAC was before my time, but I'd agree that development was probably
centralized in those days. What is in dispute is whether development was
centralized in the years or decades immediately preceding the PC. But
distributed development occurred even when the computer was centralized, even
before the 7090.

> Like I said, I didn't think I was making an extravagant claim here or going
> against what was pretty much accepted interpretation of computing historical
> facts. Since I'm not trying to say something like "The Earth Is Flat!" I'm
> believing that somehow I'm miscommunicating. OTOH, if someone wants to
> believe that computing only started when IBM invented the PC, then I suppose
> that belief would lead one to conclude that "distributed" and "centralized"
> computing have always existed side-by-side and it has never been otherwise.
> I suppose there really isn't anything I can do about that belief.

Actually, IBM didn't invent the personal computer, although it did significantly
alter the accepted architecture. IBM did push "personal computing" before there
was a noticeable personal computer industry, with such products as CALL/360 and
VSPC.