From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-0.4 required=5.0 tests=AC_FROM_MANY_DOTS,BAYES_00 autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,d875f8fc1f73cf09 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-05-03 10:37:10 PST Path: newsfeed.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news.tele.dk!193.251.151.101!opentransit.net!wanadoo.fr!isdnet!psinet-france!psiuk-f4!psiuk-p4!uknet!psiuk-n!news.pace.co.uk!nh.pace.co.uk!not-for-mail From: "Marin David Condic" Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Subject: Operating Systems (was: Re: Compiling AFLEX 1.4a with Dec Ada 83 3.5-20 on Open VMS 7.1) Date: Thu, 3 May 2001 13:28:54 -0400 Organization: Posted on a server owned by Pace Micro Technology plc Message-ID: <9cs4go$ket$1@nh.pace.co.uk> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: 136.170.200.133 X-Trace: nh.pace.co.uk 988910936 20957 136.170.200.133 (3 May 2001 17:28:56 GMT) X-Complaints-To: newsmaster@pace.co.uk NNTP-Posting-Date: 3 May 2001 17:28:56 GMT X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.50.4522.1200 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4522.1200 Xref: newsfeed.google.com comp.lang.ada:7125 Date: 2001-05-03T17:28:56+00:00 List-Id: Hey, dude! Its VMS Forever!!! :-) My understanding of the situation is this: (Someone please stop me before I go off inventing history again!!! :-) Micro$oft wanted to discontinue the MS-DOS based OS's in favor of a next-generation product that would be a *real* OS, complete with virtual memory, real security, networking built in, etc. They hired a bunch of guys who once invented VMS to do the job. Figuring it would take a while to get there, they thought there was time enough to do one more iteration on the MS-DOS based OS and capture a bunch of cash from the gullible and the stupid, before giving them a *real* OS. Well, someone on the Win9X project intercoursed-up and let the WNT (subtract one letter from each position - coincidence? I think not!) team finish up before they did. WNT was ready - Win9X was not. What's a good capitalist to do? Throw out all of the Win9X stuff and just sell WNT? Bad Capitalist! No Cookie! Figure out a way to recoup the investment in Win9X is what you want to do. They go off and try to find a niche for WNT (business) while persuading everyone that "No, Really! Win9x actually *is* Shinola" and we all need to buy it for home use. They go off and disable various capabilities of WNT so that W95 has some features to offer above those of WNT and a bunch of folks get "Marketed" without being bought flowers and taken to dinner first. Which would I rather have? Given that the only choices are (were) Win95/98 and WinNT/2K, I'd much rather have the NT branch. It wasn't until Intel came out with a 32-bit address space and Micro$oft came out with NT that I was willing to buy a PC at all. (Before that, it was Macintosh for me - out of protest, more than merit. Before that it was DEC-Pro350/RSX11M+. Before that, it was the stone ages when nobody had a computer of their own at home. You had a glass teletype and an acoustic modem that you used to dial in to the PDP-10 wherein you had a Real Man's Computer to play with! :-) Given an ideal world, what would I prefer? Well, lets start by saying that Unix (in its various flavors) is a computer virus with a GUI interface. The most popular OS's today (Add together the various flavors of Windoze and the various flavors of Unix) all have a C or C-ish API. I'd rather have an Ada API (OOP style where possible) but I'd settle for an API that at least passed parameters in a *SANE* manner rather than pointers to pointers to sturctures of pointers to arrays of raw bytes - which is the sort of thing C programmers seem to like. (Is Nick Roberts done yet with AdaOS? :-) It obviously should support the reasonable and customary things we've come to expect from OS's these days (virtual memory, multiprogramming/multitasking, etc...) So far, I don't know of anything out there that meets these criteria & has any sort of reasonably wide distribution. Any suggestions? MDC -- Marin David Condic Senior Software Engineer Pace Micro Technology Americas www.pacemicro.com Enabling the digital revolution e-Mail: marin.condic@pacemicro.com Web: http://www.mcondic.com/ "Gautier of my Mollin" wrote in message news:mailman.988906384.3230.comp.lang.ada@ada.eu.org... > OK, so which one would you abandon: Win95 or WinNT ? >