someone smarter than Dave Cutler
in [Device Drivers]
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From: jmfbahciv on 31 Mar 2010 07:11 Mark Crispin wrote: > On Tue, 30 Mar 2010, Pat Farrell posted: >> The Tenex/Tops-20 folks had it right, and they were all DEC. > > Why is it that the closing theme from Camelot runs through my > mind...about how in a halcyon time there was something fair and > wonderful that is gone forever except in memory... > >> But his decisions hurt both VMS and NT, or rather his lack of experience >> in the state of the art. And in some cases, the start of the art we are >> talking about is 1969 art, implemented in the late 70s for VMS and late >> 80s for NT. > > 1969-1970 seems to have been a critical turning point. It saw the > release of Multics (although the project started in 1964), and the > inception of Tenex (later TOPS-20) and UNIX. > > Also in that time, TOPS-10 and ITS, which were much earlier technology, > had mid-life kickers in which you can draw a clear "before/after" line. > > I wonder if anyone will ever write an accurate history of that time, I doubt it. >as > opposed to the various bogus histories that overly tout self-promoters > (Jobs, Gates, Stallman, Cutler, etc.) to the exclusion of others. Most > of these so-called histories totally ignore the PDP-10, Because the PDP-10 will be ignored. >a platform that > utterly dominated from the late 1960s until the late 1970s, and remained > important until the late 1980s. And the notion that free software and > software sharing didn't exist prior to the GNU religion is downright > offensive. You are being kind. :-) /BAH
From: jmfbahciv on 31 Mar 2010 07:15 John Francis wrote: > In article <lcosn.20672$iu2.3907(a)newsfe15.iad>, > Pat Farrell <pfarrell(a)pfarrell.com> wrote: >> Jonathan de Boyne Pollard wrote: >>>> _Showstopper_ mentions this. >>>> >>> I'm going to have to read that, someday. >>> >>>> Cutler had to be dragged kicking and screaming into allowing some >>>> paging of the kernel. >>>> >>> I wonder how much of the stick that Dave Cutler gets is completely >>> justified. >> IMHO, a lot. He had blinders on the topic of modern memory management. >> The Tenex/Tops-20 folks had it right, and they were all DEC. Now at the >> time, DEC was not really a single company, so a bit of the NIH spirit >> made sense from a corporate view. >> >> But his decisions hurt both VMS and NT, or rather his lack of experience >> in the state of the art. And in some cases, the start of the art we are >> talking about is 1969 art, implemented in the late 70s for VMS and late >> 80s for NT. > > I don't believe it was ignorance as much as it was a deliberate choice. Yep. > I always describe Cutler as having 20/20 tunnel vision - he knew what > he considered to be most important, and focussed on getting that done. Yep. > Other stuff that was just less important didn't get any attention. > One thing people generally fail to mention is that Cutler delivered > the initial versions of VMS (and, later, NT) reasonably close to the > originally-targeted schedule; a feat which was practically unheard of > with large software projects. Adding complicated memory management > would have slowed down the schedule, so it got left off. > > I never worked directly with Dave Cutler, but I was working in the > same group as him for a while (Languages & Tools; he was working on > the C project, while I was working on the VMS debugger). I found him > to be dogmatic, and convinced he was right 100% of the time - just > like most software engineers. You didn't meet my guys ;-). > But over all I suspect he had a better > accuracy rate than average. I also saw nothing to cause me to doubt > the anecdotes telling of his arrogance and poor interpersonal skills. > I was one who told him no and made it stick. Not many people were able to do that. /BAH
From: jmfbahciv on 31 Mar 2010 07:17 Scott Lurndal wrote: > Mark Crispin <mrc(a)panda.com> writes: > >> I wonder if anyone will ever write an accurate history of that time, as >> opposed to the various bogus histories that overly tout self-promoters >> (Jobs, Gates, Stallman, Cutler, etc.) to the exclusion of others. Most of >> these so-called histories totally ignore the PDP-10, a platform that >> utterly dominated from the late 1960s until the late 1970s, and remained >> important until the late 1980s. And the notion that free software and >> software sharing didn't exist prior to the GNU religion is downright >> offensive. > > You write "the PDP-10, a platform that utterly dominated from the late > 1960's to the 1970's.". > > I assume you are speaking with your tongue in your cheek, since clearly > the IBM 3[67]0 family and clones dominated the period in question, with the PDP-10 > relegated to fourth or fifth tier after Burroughs, Sperry, Honeywell, > Bull and CDC. > Not in the educational and science sectors. A lot of kiddies' first encounter with a computer was a PDP-10. Those OSes gave all users the impression that each one had access to the whole machine's services. Anybody who had caught the computer bug wanted to have their own gear after that. PDP-11s and PDP-8s were available to soothe those itches. The PDP-10 was the first PC for all of its users. /BAH
From: jmfbahciv on 31 Mar 2010 07:19 Jim Stewart wrote: > Scott Lurndal wrote: >> Mark Crispin <mrc(a)panda.com> writes: >> >>> I wonder if anyone will ever write an accurate history of that time, >>> as opposed to the various bogus histories that overly tout >>> self-promoters (Jobs, Gates, Stallman, Cutler, etc.) to the exclusion >>> of others. Most of these so-called histories totally ignore the >>> PDP-10, a platform that utterly dominated from the late 1960s until >>> the late 1970s, and remained important until the late 1980s. And the >>> notion that free software and software sharing didn't exist prior to >>> the GNU religion is downright offensive. >> >> You write "the PDP-10, a platform that utterly dominated from the late >> 1960's to the 1970's.". >> I assume you are speaking with your tongue in your cheek, since clearly >> the IBM 3[67]0 family and clones dominated the period in question, >> with the PDP-10 >> relegated to fourth or fifth tier after Burroughs, Sperry, Honeywell, >> Bull and CDC. > > You are, of course, correct. > > Anyone that takes the time to leaf through some > Datamation magazines of that era would be lucky > to find any reference to PDP-10's. Snobbery will get you nowhere. PDP-10s were not designed for huge data processing tasks. Datamation focused on that which was IBM-centric. /BAH /BAH
From: jmfbahciv on 31 Mar 2010 07:20
Mark Crispin wrote: > On Tue, 30 Mar 2010, Jim Stewart posted: >> Anyone that takes the time to leaf through some >> Datamation magazines of that era would be lucky >> to find any reference to PDP-10's. > > Using Datamation as an historical reference is like using the National > Enquirier. ROTFLMAO. Much better answer than the one I just wrote. /BAH |