On Tue, 14 Aug 2001, Adrian Vickers wrote:
> At 05:16 pm 13/08/2001 -0400, Douglas Quebbeman wrote:
> >
> >For me, it should be a date to *mourn*, not to celebrate.
>
> Hmm, I'm going to have to disagree with you now...
I will have to as well.
> <snip>
> >
> >But I digress. While he was doing this, I was looking
> >around the store, and saw the Doom of Computing in the
> >form of a computer that didn't require a soldering iron
> >to build and use- namely, an Apple II.
>
> I think all of us have our own personal view on "when computing had it's
> golden age". For me, 1984 and the Sinclair QL was the peak of the
> microcomputer (as opposed to the IBM PC & clones). For you, it must have
> been around 197<mumble>.
I think it was somewhere in that range too. Having my Sinclair 1000 talk
to my Colecovision through the memory slot was kinda neat.
> >The beginning of the end. I knew it then, and I was
> >proved right.
>
> I dispute that: Computers and computing go from strength to strength.
> There's more than just PCs out there; the mighty mainframe still rules the
> roost in many places, there's Apple Macs, VAX minis, Crays, and probably
> many others I can't even think of. And, for the soldering-iron fans,
> embedded computing is probably stronger than it ever was - *everything's*
> got a computer or three in it...
In many places? The mainframe rules the roost period. What do you think
serves the databases that run the neato little things your PCs do on the
internet? IBM DB2/390.
> >Again, it's nice to have fast, cheap
> >computers, but I for one would have been just as
> >happy for the next 20 years having fast, cheap TERMINALS
> >to hook to the mainframes. And the continued high cost of
> >entry would have kept from coming into existence an entire
> >generation of self-taught (and poorly so) programmers who
> >have and continue to crank out some of the worst software
> >imaginable. In the halcyon days, most of the bad code was
> >writtwn by the lusers themselves...
>
> That's a bit elitist, isn't it? Besides, most of the self-taught
> programmers of whom you speak are not really programmers; they're merely
> users with enough knowledge to be dangerous. Besides, if it wasn't for the
> microprocessor and all that it begat, this list wouldn't even be here...
I don't know if I necessarily think this anymore, but whenever I used to
see droves of mindless PC zombies getting on the 'net, I used to think,
"Hmmm. Fresh meat."
> >Easy access to fast, cheap computers drove the genesis of
> >an entire generation of self-taught programmers who didn't
> >give a whit for structured programming or anything else that
> >resembles a methodology, and who single-handedly changed the
> >expectations that managers have about how quickly things
> >get done. Sure RAD helped speed programming along, but not
> >nearly as much just cutting corners... which the PC made
> >easier... damn, I feel a song coming on again:
>
> It wasn't the PC that made cutting corners easy; it was the near-universal
> use of BASIC - a fundamentally unstructured language - that is responsible
> for the bulk of the "bad programmers"; and I say that as a professional
> programmer who uses BASIC....!
That and all the stupid ass "crackers" who learned assembler just to get
free shareware.
> Maybe if PASCAL had been the language de jour, today's self-taught
> programmers would be better at it...
How about something like LISP or SML? Maybe Prolog (!)... I know I'm
pushing it with that one.
> >No, not only will I not celebrate it, but I need to
> >find a black armband to wear the rest of the month.
>
> IMHO, no. The PC had to happen; it was just a case of who got lucky (or had
> the best marketing). At the end of the day, the PC offered unrivalled
> expansion possibilities, a comparatively friendly OS (Gates did well to
> poach DOS), and good flexibility thanks to the lack of built in anything.
>
> Personally, I'd have liked to have seen a MC68000 based machine become
> today's PC (mainly because I'd already learned assembler on the QL). No
> doubt Commodore fans would have preferred the C128 or Amiga to "grow up"
> into the PC.
I would've loved to have seen the Atari computers take over. I still have
a couple of Hades I use regularly.
> Well, I'm off to dabble with my CBM PET, or maybe the MZ-80K. They're fun,
> but I wouldn't like to have to use them every day, day in day out...
I'll be off tinkering with my big-iron VAX and my S/390 G5 (ot).
Peace... Sridhar
> Cheers!
> Ade.
> --
> B-Racing: B where it's at :-)
> http://www.b-racing.co.uk
>
Received on Mon Aug 13 2001 - 21:45:12 BST