From: db3l@ans.net (David Bolen)
Subject: Re: Multitasking (was MS's misconduct!)
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 23:56:08 GMT
	<1992Sep22.090148.15337@kub.nl><1992Sep17.233946.1@vax1.umkc.edu><1992Sep20.234146.25252@microsoft.com>
	<unruh.717134870@physics.ubc.ca><1992Sep24.104407.22643@microsoft.com><1992Sep28.025600.17618@microsoft.com>
	<1992Sep29.212741.10306@microsoft.com>
Organization: Advanced Network & Services, Inc. - Elmsford, NY

In article <1992Sep29.212741.10306@microsoft.com> petesk@microsoft.com (Pete Skelly) writes:

>In article <1992Sep28.210112.15594@ans.net> db3l@ans.net wrote:
>> In article <1992Sep28.025600.17618@microsoft.com> petesk@microsoft.com (Pete Skelly) writes:
>> 
>> >>    (useful background operations:
>> >>	appointments, spooling, mail/news delivery)
>> >
>> >I do these on a daily basis, on a Win31 machine (non-premptive),
>> >while running Word, or Solitaire, or whatever.  
>> 
>> Alright - now you've got me confused.  Aren't you effectively using
>> multitasking?  Aren't you *using* more than one app at the same time?  Your
>> background jobs aren't stopped - they're running at the same time that you
>> use Word or Solitaire or whatever.
>
>Look Fred, someone else called me on this.  Dave, thank you for doing this
>in a sane way without calling my mother names or anything.

No problem - looks like there's enough of that going on around here anyway.
I don't tend to agree with you recently, but maybe we can get the signal to
noise ratio up a bit.

>The main point that I was trying, appearently unclearly, to get across is
>that preemptive multitasking is not the savior of the world, as both sides
>of the OS/2 and NT group tend to say.  (and UNIX guys too).  It is just
>another tool, nothing more.  It is useful, but so are other things.

I think this thread has degenerated a bit ... I do recall you using the
term preemptive in one of your early posts, but it got lost pretty quickly,
and without any explicit mention why.  I also think my initial reply said I
didn't think multitasking was a holy grail, but that it was more important
than you were making it out to be.

I'll buy that it's a tool (although I'm not sure it's so much a tool for an
end user as a capability), but I think it's a pretty important tool -
probably one of the most important tool/capabilities that current systems
can offer developers and users alike.

>                                                                     It is
>not the only tool around to do things either.  It has its benefits
>(parallel programming paradigm, etc), and its drawbacks (trying to avoid
>deadlocks, critical sections, etc).

I think your points apply more to threads than to multitasking, and more to
developers than users.  For the average end user, having a multitasking
system provides for significantly increased functionality, IMHO.

>> Doesn't this imply that multitasking (whether preemptive or non-preemptive)
>> is a useful thing?  Isn't that somewhat opposite to what you've been saying
>> in your posts recently?
>
>BTW: I was arguing mostly from the point of view that preemptive multitasking
>was not as necessary as people were pointing out.

I haven't kept a log of the messages, but I know that I at least got the
impression from some of your recent posts that you were proposing that
multitasking wasn't useful at all, and that users only "used" (with the
subsequent discussion on what that means) a single application at a time,
so why would they need multitasking?  That's the view that I don't agree
with, as I feel all users can benefit from multitasking (whether preemptive
or not).

It sounds like we're not that far off after all - I guess that's the risk
of simplifying things too much - it can lead to misinterpretation.

--
-- David
--
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