SemiOT: Mourning for Classic Computing (Was: RE: PeeCee turn s 20) [longish]

From: Douglas Quebbeman <dhquebbeman_at_theestopinalgroup.com>
Date: Tue Aug 14 06:58:56 2001

> > 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.

Hmmm... probably true for the commercial sites, of which I spend
virtually zero of my personal time. Unless Google uses the OBM iron...

> > 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."

If Horace Greely was right about him, then P. T. Barnum would
love living in this age...

> > 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.

I dunno; I haven't run into too many of these people in the orkplace...
 
> > 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.

Fine languages.

> > >No, not only will I not celebrate it, but I need to
> > >find a black armband to wear the rest of the month.

[..snip..]
 
> 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).

Cool.

-dq
Received on Tue Aug 14 2001 - 06:58:56 BST