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:

> I had no close contacts with VAX community, but I have heard not once that
> Ultrix had some popularity, In one time it was even regarded by some
> people as the best Unix of that time.

Yep, DEC was good in making software, which led it to downfall.

>> There was microVAX. As for costs, that was management choice,
> 
> Not purely management choice, though. There was a range to choose within
> it, but that range certainly did not start from zero.

If I correctly remember, Olson said that nobody would need a computer at
home. DEC's policy was to promote the nonsense of the "best
perfomance/price relation" instead of giving VAXes to universities for free
and selling DEC Proffessional for a reasonable price.

>> 3) VMS was not portable in any sense.
> 
>> It is not a property of OS. VMS could be implemented on any platform and
>> if they wrote it in Ada... (:-))
> 
> Well, Cutler once publicly regretted that VMS was written in assembly
> language and not in a portable language (perhaps he meant C, but I dont't
> know).
> 
> As for your statement that VMS could be implemented on any platform, this
> is simply false. For example, do you really think that VMS could be
> implemented on early IBM PC (with 8086, 640 Kb memory and 5-10 Mb disk)?
> Or, 20 years later, on Palm handhelds?

To your knowledge, I worked under RSX-11M running on a machine, which had
256K RAM, 2 x 1.5Mb HD disks and sort of 0.3MHz. That machine supported 2
interactive users.

>> DEC had the best operating system,
> 
> Your previous statements imply that you mean VMS here. But some people
> those times liked TOPS-10/20 (also DEC's) much better. And Multics users
> most probably would not agree with you.

Sounds as if we all were using Multics! It is less relevant which OS was the
best, the problem is that the worst won.

>> the best hardware,
> 
> It is disputable. Good doesn't mean the best. My own impression after
> reading VAX hardware handbook was that the instruction set (as well as
> some particular instructions) is overcomplicated. That gorgeous
> instruction set was perhaps justified by the targetted application domain,
> which I thought was CADs, but nevertheless I don't see a reason to call
> this hardware architecture "the best".

Just compare PDP-11 instruction set with other CISCs like x86 or Motorola.
[VAX instruction set is an extension of PDP-11.] Actually, MACRO-11
(PDP/VAX assembler) was a higher level language than C. I believe that
PDP-11 instruction set was rewarded in a contest as the best one.

>> the best compilers
> 
> I can't agree with this claim. Their COBOL was probably weaker then IBM
> COBOL, their PL/I was probably (I didn't try it, but I have read some
> docs) weaker than IBM's PL/I Optimizer/Checkout pair, their Fortan IV was
> not better than IBM Fortran H (although for Fortran 77 the situation
> possibly was in favor of DEC).

I do not know COBOL, but IBM PL/1 was not that good, because different
compiler modes implemented different language subsets. I never had any
problems with DEC Fortran IV. It was excellent. As for DEC C and DEC Ada
they were definitively the best at that time. DEC C gave you a meaningfull
error message when you forgot a }-bracket. That was a revolution, in C
compilers! (:-)) I remember first PC Pascal, which had nearly one error
message "error in expression". (:-))

>> The system worked first for
>> UNIX and then Microsoft, because latter were even worse than UNIX.
> 
> You continue to ignore the fact that the population of users was radically
> changed. It is your beloved market, with which aristocracy/nobility
> naturally faded as the market widened.

As I said, the problem is that the marked, beloved or not, does not work
well for software. This is the only reason why even less beloved government
should intervene. Because software is essential to the future of humankind.

>> And MS in its early days was heavyweight?
> 
> MS in its early days was fully backed by IBM, didn't you know?

You mean that IBM invested in MS?

>> >> Which features of UNIX and Windows gave that extension?
>> > 
>> > Availability of these OSes and accessability of the features, which
>> > are/were important for general/mass end-users and corresponding
>> > applications. A quality in strictly software engineering sense was not
>> > among those features simply because it was not among the most important
>> > things for that audience.
>>
>> See, technical ussues are irrelevant.
> 
> A technical issue doesn't become relevant automatically, just as a
> consequence of its technical status.

And this is exactly the problem I am talking about.

>> The Internet was *shaped* by UNIX and later Windows.
> 
> But why it was not shaped by IBM mainframe OSes, PDP-11 RSX, VAX/VMS and
> other noble systems? Do you think that this is just bad luck?

Yes.

>> >> 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.
>> > 
>> > I don't know which elementary ways you mean, but I'm sure that at least
>> > at the current stage, any elementary way of that kind that will not
>> > broke the service to the end, will be immediately circumvented.
>>
>> There are thousands of ways. Just attach an ID to any mail source and
>> limit the amount of mail generated by a source by some limit per day. The
>> IDs can be made unique, provider-local, untrackable. If a provider
>> refuses to conform then instead of being mail "relayer" it becomes a
>> "source".
> 
> Good for China. Perhaps will more or less work for few European countries
> (for other reasons). But that's all - it can't work for the whole world
> and many individual countries without many additional rules and devices,
> which have to be supported not just by end-user OSes (which is trivial
> addition to any OS), but by real nation-scale and world-scale forces,
> which is problematic.

And again, this is just another statement that technical issues are
irrelevant.

>> >> > 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.
>> > 
>> > Strange. How can I be joking about million of car accident victims
>> > (worldwide) every year?
>>
>> Because human fault /= software fault. When you make a car accident you
>> are liable. Who is, when a program crashes? Right, the program, and
>> nobody else.
> 
> I can't get you here: do you think that a car itself (that is, by its own
> failures - mechanical and other) can't cause an accident without a crucial
> participation of a human (driver) or (in the future) of the car's internal
> software?

If that is a construction defect then the car producer is liable. If it was
the driver's fault, then the driver is liable. There is always a human
being to send to jail. For software it isn't so.

> By the way, don't you think (according to the logic you applied the
> Internet) that the construction of a car shaped driver's behaviour and
> traffic patterns?

Surely. If cars could fly, we would have no highways.

>> > There are much more important issues in the case. For
>> > example, will be car vendors required to publish full sources of the
>> > software used in their cars?
>>
>> What for? To laugh at?
> 
> There are enough people in the world who know cars and at the same have
> some programmer skills. Some of them may become interested in studying
> those sources (of their own car's software, for example). It may
> constitute very significant resource for finding remaining bugs and
> glitches.

So the system of that complexity should be controlled by a crowd of
hobbists? Excellent. The next step would be to adopt this for aircrafts,
nuclear reactors and weapon systems!

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