Operating systems / Best in "isolation"

From: Douglas Quebbeman <dhquebbeman_at_theestopinalgroup.com>
Date: Fri Oct 20 09:46:20 2000

> For the first, with computers so widespread and the ease
> to communicate between users so prevalent these days, maybe
> we need the exact opposite -- for each of us to be isolated
> from one another and not see the other's toys. As I think
> Ernest recently said, he was happy with his first Commodore 64
> until someone told him otherwise. If we would instead just
> cherish what we have, and <grin> otherwise sit in Dilbert-like
> mini-cubicles without the ability to see your neighbor,
> then we wouldn't know what we are missing...

I don't think any of us really want to be isolated, we
just don't want to suffer from undesirable connectivity.

> (For you software developers and hardware techs of yore --
> did you complain about the software and hardware 20 years
> ago in the same fashion as I hear complaining today? I suspect
> so, it is just that we didn't hear it so often as we were
> isolated. But then again I can dream that it was better then...)

20 years ago, I was a systems programmer on a pair of Prime
minis. As with most Prime sites in those days, we had the
source code to every release of Primos (the OS) that came
out, and we had things we thought we could improve on, and
did. Since we could just get in there and change it, we didn't
think to complain.

That included having the source code to the compilers
(except now that I think of it, the COBOL compiler), so
we could at least find out *why* what we were trying to do
didn't work.

Prior to that, while in college, I had access to the source
code for the CDC Kronos OS, and most of its compilers. I didn't
have similar access on the DEC-10 or the IBM 370/158 AP, but
on the DEC-10, we had RWATCH in source code form, which let
us do almost anything the system operator could do.

> For the second, I would like to think that our need to upgrade
> should be driven by *our* needs to fix something. I dislike it
> when the direction comes from the other end -- that is from the
> vender or developer telling me I must upgrade and/or replace
> something.

Hey, that's called supply-side economics, supposedly a Good Thing.

;-)

-dq
Received on Fri Oct 20 2000 - 09:46:20 BST