From: dhd@exnet.co.uk (Damon)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: OS/MFT and Macintosh (was: ..History)
Date: 5 Sep 92 21:18:44 GMT
Organization: ExNet Systems Ltd Public Access News, London, UK

In article <PCG.92Sep5132252@aberdb.aber.ac.uk> pcg@aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) writes:
>I could even go as far as saying that most/a lot of the technology in
>currently popular OS architectures can be directly traced back to the
>fifties (my favourite example is 'ld' on many "Unix" implementations).
>
>All this is not encouraging. I seem to have noticed that as the computer
>market has expanded, the lead time for new technology has increased. I
>think that as things currently are, the time between successful
>demonstration of an architectural technology and its diffusion in the
>marketplace now stands at around 20 years (for example Accent,
>reincarnated as Mach3, was conceived about 15 years ago, and its
>underlying technology is only now becoming popular), if ever.
>
>This surely has (dire) implications for architecture in all branches of
>computer science.

This is fascinating.  I've missed comp.arch having not had a fix for a
whole week.  B^>

This 20-year lead-time may or may not be real.  I don't find it
*necessarily* a bad thing.  And note that smaller communities can
change faster than large ones for the same disruption (I opine...).

PROS:

 1) I like to stick with a technology for a reasonable number of years
    so as to become relatively proficient, and so as to spend more time
    on the applications and what I want to do with them than on the
    tools.

    Thus I am a grudging X Windows user, and am a little happier with
    the less overloaded interface of SunView for the moment.  When X
    goes 3D with VR in five years (B^>), then I'll make the effort to
    change to that wholeheartedly.  I might have to start ignoring the
    three Sun-3s in my front room in the same way I ignore the PCs here
    now except for file-transfer B^>.

    I also think that while C, SML and Prolog (for example) are all
    nice languages, with Pascal a little aged perhaps, C++ is a
    revolting kludge and I will wait for the *next* generation of
    languages to come around before trying to get performance and
    balanced semantics in one language!  At least if everything is
    around for a while we get the chance to experiment with plenty of
    variations, and many people will swear that C++ *is* very good.  If
    C had only lasted three years (if, say, UNIX had only lasted that
    long before something better/different replaced it), C++ would
    never have been thought of.

 2) Long market stability means commodities get cheaper.  We can't all
    have the latest technology on our desks anyway, so better 20 years
    out of date and dirt cheap than not at all.  Ie better DOS on 50m
    desks than super-duper WhatzitOS (TM) on 50,000 and crank desk
    calculators on the rest.

    UNIX and DOS demonstrate that if something's around long enough
    even the putative hairdressers of the economy can start doing
    useful things at low cost.

 3) I'm helping design the architecture for a *major* project which
    won't ship for 10 years.  At least I can hope that a few of the
    major components around now will still exist in a recognisable and
    usable form then.  Else the design process would be hopeless.  You
    just don't get multi-multi-million UK#/US$ projects from drawing
    board to PCB faster than this anyway, so inertia in the market
    proves useful here...

CONS:

 1) When things have been around for a while they accumulate baggage
    like ships accumulate barnacles.  Only no one's scraped UNIX much
    recently...  Even the fairly lightweight DOS has bloated into
    Windows 3, which I find primitive and insulting to the
    intelligence.  (Yes, I know SunView is less sophisticated, but it
    at least doesn't have the panaceal pretentions of DOS.) The
    barnacles absorb the CPU power without contributing much to the
    semantic content of the result.

 2) Technologies can get stuck because of marketing people at the
    selling end frightened of change and because of out-dated
    management at the buying end feeling a warm glow that their
    ostritch-like behaviour has `proven' correct and they don't need to
    make the effort to change.  Bad news.  Stifling.  (And these old
    fogies can't write nice short, punchy sentences.  Like this.  Like
    wot we kan.  B^>)

Well, this is long enough already, but I guess you get my drift.
Inertia is not always a bad thing.  Arguably it kept Britain
more-or-less socially intact since 1206 for example; let's just hope
DOS and FORTRAN fall apart sooner.  B^>

Damon
-- 
Damon Hart-Davis | Tel/Fax: +44 81 755 0077 |1.24|| Cheap Sun eqpt available.
Internet: dhd@exnet.co.uk | Also: Damon@ed.ac.uk || US high-perf motor groups.
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