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

["Alexander E. Kopilovich" <aek@VB1162.spb.edu>]

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.

> even managers will be saved? (:-))

Yes, of course. Today, within the celebration of Orthodox Easter Sunday,
I declare that the managers are among the common people and will be saved,
except those who were permanently succumbed to the Satan thus adding to and
severely aggravating their Original Sin.

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

> 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. 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?

> 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.

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.

>> 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?

> 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? 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.

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.

> >> "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.

> 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.

> >> 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.

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".

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).




Alexander Kopilovitch                      aek@vib.usr.pu.ru
Saint-Petersburg
Russia