Although his trolling is less justified. I have heard his criticism of PL/1 was merely based on its inclusion of BCD numeric data types. Although many of its arithmetic rules were admittely strange), IMHO Dijksta overlooked many of the elegant features of this first really modern language. In fact I knew of CS profs who considered a free PL/1 compiler called PL/C a godsend. And the remarks about IBM's systems reveals that he only knew the MVS family; VM (VM/370 at the time) was (and is) a very small, powerful and simple system. Actually IBM was never anything like Microsoft; IBM actually did invent, not just "embrace and extend". Those who doubt otherwise should check out the history of the IBM 7030 "Stretch" computer sometime.
Minor notes on Cringely's editorial re: IBM 390
on
Today's SCO News
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Cringely sez...
The majority of IBM's work on the S/390 was to port it to a very alien platform. I'm sure there were parts of Linux that needed some code help -- for example, the S/390 handles disk and file systems quite a bit differently. That disk and file system predates almost all contemporary computer hardware. The file system originated in the S/360 days, the 1960s.
The Sytem 390 is hardly a "very alien platform"; its a von Neumann machine with a byte addressable memory; in some ways it resembles the PowerPC or 680x0. Linux/390 on zVM uses standard Linux filesystems on IBM disks; it doesn't use the CMS or MVS file systems. Handling low level disk I/O on a 390 is different (channel programs or using the diagnose instruction in a virtual machine; don't know which Linux uses myself) but this is not a fantastic difference.
Funny you should put it that way, the original DOS for the IBM 360 (maybe even worse than MS-DOS IMHO) is almost 40 years old now. And its successor DOS/VSE is still in use.
I didn't know that; I was wondering how they made make this look like this:-)
Paying more, getting less
on
A Better Finder?
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· Score: 1, Interesting
I have been a Mac user for some years and I just want to bleat that with OS X we have been paying more for a crippled and slow Finder as compared to Mac OS 9. This is the primary user interface to the computer and should have gotten as least as much attention as iTunes and those other toys. Also, what happened to AppleScript recordability of the Finder? BAH!!!!!
A Professor "V" at the university I went to got pressure from the admininstration over the low grades he was giving students. He replied by applying the "V shift" to all the grades and reissuing them... in FORTRAN the "shift" was...
XNEW=10.0*SQRT(XOLD)
where XOLD is the OLD mark and XNEW the new mark. So if you originally got 0 or 100 you still got the same old mark but a losing 49 turned into a 70!
Re:Oldest working code...
on
Immortal Code
·
· Score: 1
what may be some of the oldest "working" code that's publicly available.
There are emulators such as Hercules for old mainframes and some of the code, which is freely available, goes back to the early 60s. One example that springs to mind is the IBM Algol-F compiler, circa 1965.
Complete source code of compilers for the Neliac programming language are printed in the book
"Machine-independent computer programming"
by Maurice Halstead. Circa 1962.
YEAH LIKE WATFIV!
on
Immortal Code
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
WATFIV (and WATFOR, WATBOL etc) are the classic example in my mind. Made by the University of Waterloo, now languishing somewhere (at Sybase maybe?!)
Slashdot Mirror
Although his trolling is less justified. I have heard his criticism of PL/1 was merely based on its inclusion of BCD numeric data types. Although many of its arithmetic rules were admittely strange), IMHO Dijksta overlooked many of the elegant features of this first really modern language. In fact I knew of CS profs who considered a free PL/1 compiler called PL/C a godsend. And the remarks about IBM's systems reveals that he only knew the MVS family; VM (VM/370 at the time) was (and is) a very small, powerful and simple system. Actually IBM was never anything like Microsoft; IBM actually did invent, not just "embrace and extend". Those who doubt otherwise should check out the history of the IBM 7030 "Stretch" computer sometime.
The majority of IBM's work on the S/390 was to port it to a very alien platform. I'm sure there were parts of Linux that needed some code help -- for example, the S/390 handles disk and file systems quite a bit differently. That disk and file system predates almost all contemporary computer hardware. The file system originated in the S/360 days, the 1960s.
The Sytem 390 is hardly a "very alien platform"; its a von Neumann machine with a byte addressable memory; in some ways it resembles the PowerPC or 680x0. Linux/390 on zVM uses standard Linux filesystems on IBM disks; it doesn't use the CMS or MVS file systems. Handling low level disk I/O on a 390 is different (channel programs or using the diagnose instruction in a virtual machine; don't know which Linux uses myself) but this is not a fantastic difference.
Imagine MS-DOS at 40 years old? Eyyyyhhhh!
Funny you should put it that way, the original DOS for the IBM 360 (maybe even worse than MS-DOS IMHO) is almost 40 years old now. And its successor DOS/VSE is still in use.
Like destroying Colossus at the end of WWII?
I didn't know that; I was wondering how they made make this look like this :-)
I have been a Mac user for some years and I just want to bleat that with OS X we have been paying more for a crippled and slow Finder as compared to Mac OS 9. This is the primary user interface to the computer and should have gotten as least as much attention as iTunes and those other toys. Also, what happened to AppleScript recordability of the Finder? BAH!!!!!
Opps MVS should be 1964 sorry
Unix started as UNICS in 1969
MVS(OS/390) started as OS/360 in 196X
VM/CMS started as CP/67 in 1967 (approx)
You must have last used VM a LOT more than 15 years ago or didn't know it very well; VMCF has existed since VM/370 release 3 in 1976 ....
Check out this, the very first Fortran manual, October 15th,1956, by John Backus.
Has anybody heard any news recently from Watcom/Sybase about the 370 versions of Waterloo C, WATFIV, WATBOL, Pascal, Basic etc?
Not just the US too ... suppose someone from Upper Ruratania stores something on your PC that is illegal in Upper Ruratania... will you be extradited?
XNEW=10.0*SQRT(XOLD)
where XOLD is the OLD mark and XNEW the new mark. So if you originally got 0 or 100 you still got the same old mark but a losing 49 turned into a 70!
There are emulators such as Hercules for old mainframes and some of the code, which is freely available, goes back to the early 60s. One example that springs to mind is the IBM Algol-F compiler, circa 1965.
Complete source code of compilers for the Neliac programming language are printed in the book "Machine-independent computer programming" by Maurice Halstead. Circa 1962.
WATFIV (and WATFOR, WATBOL etc) are the classic example in my mind. Made by the University of Waterloo, now languishing somewhere (at Sybase maybe?!)