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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID
	autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4
X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit
X-Google-Thread: 103376,99ab4bb580fc34cd
X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public
From: bobduff@world.std.com (Robert A Duff)
Subject: Re: Q: access to subprogram
Date: 1996/07/30
Message-ID: <DvDLJI.L8F@world.std.com>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 171258170
references: <4t7dvt$cbo@mulga.cs.mu.OZ.AU>
 <4t8rfo$g71@butch.lmsc.lockheed.com> <Dv5KM9.B9F@world.std.com>
 <4tldre$lco@fu-berlin.de>
organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Date: 1996-07-30T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


In article <4tldre$lco@fu-berlin.de>,
Thomas Wolff <wolff@inf.fu-berlin.de> wrote:
>Regarding the popularity of distributed systems, the terminology is 
>confusing. Was it invented in this thread or is it common elsewhere? 

I don't know where the term comes from, but it certainly existed before
this thread.  It was commonly used, for example, during the Ada 9X
design.  An accusation of "proposed feature X has distributed overhead"
happened many times, and was taken quite seriously.  I suspect the term
is much older than that.

>Perhaps something like "propagated overhead" should rather be used.

Shrug.  It seems to me that one should be able to tell from context
whether you're talking about "distributed overhead" (i.e. overhead
distributed across unused features of the language) or "distributed
systems" (i.e. programs consisting of partitions distributed across a
network of computers).

- Bob