From: bruce@ais.com (Bruce C. Wright)
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy
Subject: Re: OS/2 2.x will loose its battle against NT if .....
Date: 10 Oct 92 00:59:51 GMT
Organization: Applied Information Systems, Chapel Hill, NC

In article <1992Oct9.211606.13555@muddcs.claremont.edu>, tlilley@jarthur.claremont.edu (Thomas (Ted) Lilley) writes:
> In article <1992Oct9.003603.1793@news.Hawaii.Edu> lkan@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Linus Kan) writes:
>>
>>Anyone out there believes that NT would sell for about $500?
>>I don't think so--it's just a gimmick!  It's an estimated price
>>so that tempted users like me would buy OS/2 because it's cheap.
> 
> Wow...this is the most retarded logic I've heard.
> Did you mean this in a sarcastic manner?   Whose "brilliant" gimmick is
> this?  MS's?  Oh,  I see, their gimmick is brilliant because it makes
> people  go out and buy OS/2, therefore hurting NT's acceptance in the
> marketplace.  Absolutely fabulous and masterful strategy.
> 
> What the hell are you talking about?
> What possible gain could MS have by quoting a "quite ridiculous" price
> early on, encouraging users to buy a competitor's system?

All this makes sense ... Obviously Microsoft isn't quoting a price
for NT of "less than $500" to drive people to OS/2.  I'm willing to
take them at face value when they say that they have just set the
$500 as an upper bound but that no final decisions have been made
about the list price.

But then Ted goes on to say:

>>I'm sure Microsoft is reading the OS/2 newsgroups and get user
>>evaluations and problems plus tips and ideas so that they could
>>improve their NT code.  And since NT and OS/2 are similar in code,
>>Microsoft is learning its mistakes from the release of OS/2 2.0
>>--us OS/2 users did all the test Microsoft needed for the NT kernel.
>>I'm sure the first release of NT would have less BUGS than OS/2 2.0.
>>I've had my share of bugs with OS/2!
> 
> Bugs are a random occurence...whereever programmer's mess up, that's
> where they are.  Debugging one program contributes *nothing* to
> debugging another, even if they're similar.  However, complaints about
> the implementation of OS/2 could be useful to NT.  Complaints about
> the WPS have no bearing on the Windows shell, though, and since MS
> chose to stick with that, they gain nothing in that department either.

No, bugs are _not_ a random occurrence.  Not in the sense that they
are `Markov' processes, which is the mathematical term for the type
of event that people intuitively think of as `random'.  Even simple
typos, which are the most Markov-like `bugs', are not `random' in
this sense:.  In order to be truly random, the events all have to be
independent and not depend on each other in any way -- like dice throws.
The only way for the bugs to be `random' would be for the programmer's
intentions to always be correct, and for the programmer to be unable to
learn from past mistakes by himself or others.  (It would probably also
be necessary for the programmer to be something other than human because 
the human cognitive process has certain `preferred' modes of making
mistakes).  Clearly this is not a reasonable description of professional
programmers.

Secondly, debugging one program _should_ contribute a great deal to
debugging another, _especially_ one that's similar.  If it doesn't, I
would have to question the credentials of the programmer involved.  You
should be able to pick up new techniques, tools, hints, places to look
for bugs, testing ideas, etc, with every significant program you develop.

Even looking at someone else's product _should_ help developers of a
competing product, both for things to do and for things to avoid.  This
_does_ include bugs;  it can give you ideas for approaches to try to keep
things like that from creeping into your own product.  On the other hand,
having the other product around won't help at all unless you make an
effort to learn something from it - it won't happen by osmosis.

I think both of you are taking altogether too narrow a view of what
the software development process is like.

Bruce C. Wright
Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy