From: dpbsmith@world.std.com (Daniel P. B. Smith)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: It's OK for Windows to crash. It's not OK for OS/2 to crash.
Date: 20 Aug 92 23:39:40 GMT
Article-I.D.: world.BtB326.JBJ
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA

When someone complaints that OS/2 crashes, the reply is always that
Windows crashes more. But that's missing the point. 

Circa, say, 1982 or so, you had mainframes and time-shared minicomputers,
and you had microcomputers.  Mainframes and minis had protection systems
built into their hardware which the OS took advantage of.  For all
practical purposes, you didn't worry about a bad application crashing the
OS.  For example, I did software development on the same VAX that was
running accounting, administrative word processing, research, and was used
by some very high-ranking people for electronic mail.  I did it during
business hours.  I did every stupid think you can think of and crashed
my own buggy applications all the time.  But my boss let me do it, because
we both knew the chances of bring the OS, and the wrath of dozens of users
doing mission-critical stuff was essentially nil.  (I never DID crash the
OS, by the way).

We also bought third-party software.  RS/1 from BBN was pretty fair, but
it crashed from time to time.  Word-11 from DPD was obviously a pretty
dumb port from a PDP-11, not especially well-done for the VAX, had
lotsa problems. And as for Oracle...  well, anyway, the point is that
we had buggy software of our own and "ill-behaved" software from third
parties, and it never crashed the OS.

Now we go to Apples and IBM PC's and Macintoshes.  Single user system.  
No protection in the hadware.  Lots of crashes which could easily
overwrite OS memory, or write directly to the disk hardware, etc.
If you had enough RAM... and your application was competently programmed...
and "well-behaved..." it didn't crash as often.  But it crashed.

So then Intel designed chips with mini-like protection, and afte years of
waiting for an OS to "unlock the power of the 286" the AT expired, and
OS/2 was born, and the 386 replaced the 286, and OS/2 went through four
or so revisions, and...

A badly written app can still crash the OS?  Come on.  Either the thing
is protected or it ain't.  When I was using Digitalk Smalltalk-V/PM on
OS/2 1.2 it crashed the OS all the time.  From what I read on the
Smalltalk SIG, it still happens now.  But it's Digitalk's fault for
doing something wrong.  Or is it?

On the VAX, RS/1 and Word-11 and Oracle and my stuff could do stuff wrong
and it still didn't crash the OS BECAUSE THE OS WAS RIGHT.  If OS/2 has
ANY claim to being a "real OS," it just shouldn't be possible for an
ORDINARY crufty ill-behaved application to crash it.

Come on, you're telling me that OS/2 is doing network-y, server-y,
multitaskery, zapping mission-critical electronic bucks over 
enterprise-wide LANs, and someone crashes the OS and twenty thousand
shares of stock get lost in the bit bucket ... and someone is going
to pipe up and say "It's his fault! He should have known the third
party application he was using was written in Digitalk Smalltalk!"



-- 
Daniel P. B. Smith
dpbsmith@world.std.com
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy