Re: No call for Ada (was Re: Announcing new scripting/prototyping language)

["Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>]

Alexander E. Kopilovich wrote:

> Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
> 
>> >> > So the problem is that too many managers prefer *own* short
>> >> > lifecycles, that is, they are oriented to frequent change of their
>> >> > job.
>> >>
>> >> The problem is that the system rewards this.
>> > 
>> > So we turn to the system and immediately recognize themselves in
>> > dangerous proximity to revolutionaries (because even naming the system
>> > is identifying it as external object, which is certainly at least a
>> > kind of hesery for well-intentioned member of society).
>>
>> Nope, revolutionaries want to change the system (quickly and bruttaly). I
>> am just an observer.
> 
> It may be just a starting point; also an observer may serve as a detonator
> or catalyst for others.

As we know, a problem has to be solved this or that way.

>> I do not know what is a tool-oriented OS. Tools are application programs
>> they are not a part of the OS.
> 
> Well. suppose you delete all compilers, utilities and optional services
> from OS/370 (or OS/390), and show the rest to a regular IBM mainframe
> programmer. I'm sure that s/he will say that it is still OS/370 (or 390).
> But if you make the same operation with Unix then, I think, every regular
> Unix programmer will say that it isn't Unix at all.

Exactly, because Unix is that sort of half-baked OS. Tools do not replace
the OS. But what UNIX and later Microsoft shown, one can well sell tools
and call them OS.

>   In more technical terms, Unix pay much more attention (and provides much
> more means) to interoperation between separate processes.

You definitely mean fork and copying file descriptors. Indeed, an excellent
way of interoperation.

> In classical IBM
> mainframe OSes all processes were really separated from each other, and
> when a need emerged to establish some kind of cooperation between parallel
> processes it always was a pain and required the skills far above the
> ordinary programmer's level. And that was right and good approach those
> times and for typical applications. In RSX (DEC PDP-11) situation shifted:
> it became much easier to establish cooperation between parallel processes
> (at the cost of slightly weaker separation), but it still required
> programmer's skills above average (although not "far above" any longer).

And you intentionally do not mention VMS which had uncounted ways of inter
process communication.

> And again, it was right and good approach for intended applications. In
> Unix the concept of interprocess cooperation was made one of central
> system concepts, and it was made routinely accessible for all users. It
> became possible and easy to use tools/utilities in concert, not in
> sequential order via external data files.

Come on, in UNIX everything is a file. Even locks are files...

>> OSes twenty years ago were multitasking and multiuser.
> Of course, they were.
> 
>> They were highly reliable and efficient with respect of memory
>> and CPU use. They were parallel. They had virtual memory and time
>> sharing. They provided virtual machines. They had highly integrated IDE
>> and debuggers.
> 
> All that is true.
> 
>> They were networking.
> 
> They were. But it was not a pleasure. Networking was not a strong side of
> those OSes - it was quite expensive and required highly skilled system
> administrators, which often weren't available. SNA, and even DECNET looked
> like monsters. I think that with those kinds of networking we would still
> have Internet in science fiction only.

Yes, we would have one global distributed OO networking system with nodes in
PCs. One would need no ftp to get a file. One would even have no files, but
persistent objects of different types...

> Instead we would have government,
> military, financial and perhaps big business networks only. And moreover,
> perhaps the world would look otherwise... I know too well about the
> critical role that emerging Internet played in the beginning of 90th in
> collapsing Soviet Union and (re)starting Russia.

(:-))

>> They were stable for DoS attacks of all sorts.
> 
> There were no DoS attacks those times. From where they could be
> originated?

In early 90s my friend wrote a one-line program:

for (;;) sbrk (1);

causing Sun-Solaris to stand still. Or consider fork-ing in a cycle until
there were no free slots in the process table. These kinds of DoS attacks
were just impossible under VMS.

>> What new gave UNIX and Windows to us in recent 20 years, except for
>> awk and viruses?
> 
> They gave radical extension of user base, which stimulated investments,
> which, in turn, stimulates hardware vendors, which results in dramatic
> decrease of hardware prices. Well, they did not exactly *gave* us all
> that, but they substantially participated in that.

Which features of UNIX and Windows gave that extension? What makes you think
that LSI-11 under RSX would be worse than IBM PC under CP/M? That extension
would happen anyway, but on a much higher level.

> And they gave us many proud young programmers, for good or for bad -;)
> Instead of herds of "poor users" (as I remember them from my system
> administrator's past). You may say those youngsters are unskilled and even
> spoiled in some sense. But at least they are alive, while those "poor
> users" of past time (absolute majority of them) were essentially dead.

Ah, and they were also dead if not MS-DOS!

>>> Those innocent people were often too stupid,
>>> easily lying and sometimes even intentionally damaging cables.
>>...
>> Come on, I never heard of PC users chewing cables.
> 
> It was in pre-PC time - when IBM mainframes and DEC and HP minis reigned.
> I suppose that users of those computers were no less innocent then PC
> users, weren't they?

No. Being that time a system *manager* you just suffered from the disease
all managers have. (:-))

>> And do not tell me that
>> PC users are responsible for viruses and spam.
> 
> Do you really think that all (or most) viruses and spam messages are
> originated from non-PC computers... or from PCs but not by their users?

No. The problem is that 0.001% of community can produce 60% of mail traffic.
So it is not 99.999% who are responsible, but the system, which allows
that.

> Well there is no need to fight with opinions - just look at job sites (at
> least .ru job sites) and observe there explicit requests for spammers. And
> I guess that you don't mean that wicked Unix and Windows are capable to
> *originate* viruses by themselves, without substantial help of their
> users.

See above. If the OSes and their services were developed at a minimal level
of responsibility there were no way to produce spam in its current volume.
There are elementary ways from prevent that.

> Anyway, those viruses provided good income for a number of anti-virus
> vendors, and besides that they alarmed the public, which is good for
> parties trying to put Internet under control. Spam helps the latter
> purpose too, and besides that it is an excellent medium for secret
> messages.

So you are agree that human resources are just being vasted. That is my
point.

>> >> "How they dare open E-mail attachments!
>> >> Any PC-user shall have a license for using it. Let's educate them,
>> >> better, grow a new Windows-man!"
>> > 
>> > Do you think that this is an end-user OS issue and not an Internet
>> > issue?
>>
>> This is one issue. Internet is as good as OSes involved let it to be.
> 
> No. end-user OSes are secondary at this stage. There are various standards
> (protocols, formats etc.) and backbones - they play primary roles in this
> issue.

This is what I meant.

>> What
>> is the difference between an attachment and a stack of punched cards you
>> used to feed to an OS-370 machine 30 years ago? Did it crash the system?
> 
> Well, it did sometimes. Not exactly punched cards stack, but a magnetic
> tape (which is, by the way, more proper analogy). I knew several victims
> of carelessness of this kind (on mainframes). There were so-called
> self-loading tapes. OS couln't protect itself because it was not in memory
> when such a tape was being loaded. A program from the tape accessed system
> disk and damaged the system. Old story - do not believe those who claim
> that viruses were invented on PC.

A bootable tape is not a virus, not a parasite, but an independent host, so
to say. Of course, boot sector viruses and ones writting into the system
files were impossible even under UNIX. Note also an important difference
between circumventing a protection and absence of any.

>> >> It is real, physical
>> >> catastrophes yet to come as more and more things become controlled by
>> >> software.
>> > 
>> > Certainly. Software will prevent some catastrophes and create others.
>> > Just as any other widespread and powerful technology. So what?
>>
>> It is absolutely uncontrolled.
> 
> No, far from that. Don't panic -:) . There are people scattered on the
> world - programmers, engineers, scientists and others... even managers may
> appear among them - who are competent, thinking and responsible... and
> sometimes feeling responsibity not only for their own piece of work and/or
> their own piece of time. And most of them are silent, so in normal
> circumstances you will not hear any uproar from them.

Neither we will see results of their activity of the shelves of software
shops. Ada is an example.

> And one more remark for the same issue: making a piece of software very
> reliable is not necessary a good thing. If this piece is too reliable then
> one may rely upon it for an unanticipated, perhaps very bad purpose - and
> that piece will serve him, that is, will participate in that you just
> called "uncontrolled".

Should we have build air planes falling apart to prevent 9/11?

> And anyway, software is still much more effectively controlled than light
> weapons, explosives and car traffic (perhaps you know that the latter
> kills huge number of people every year... software can't come near that
> number of victims in near future).

You are joking. To your knowledge, the next generation of cars will have
dozens of contolling computers conntected by up to 6 field buses. Guess
which language will be used to program them? Wellcome into the new bright
world.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
www.dmitry-kazakov.de