Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!julius.cs.uiuc.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!news.cs.indiana.edu!uceng!minerva!dmocsny From: dmocsny@minerva.che.uc.edu (Daniel Mocsny) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: The CPU with 3 brains---486 compatibility with 8008 Message-ID: <6704@uceng.UC.EDU> Date: 13 Nov 90 17:16:57 GMT References: <42737@mips.mips.COM> <1990Nov4.014901.23819@zoo.toronto.edu> <1990Nov6.223738.13265@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> <9333@b11.ingr.com> Sender: news@uceng.UC.EDU Organization: University of Cincinnati, Cin'ti., OH Lines: 70 In article pcg@cs.aber.ac.uk (Piercarlo Grandi) writes: >I >used to run a PDP-11/34 with 2.9BSD and five users doing development in >248KB, of which about 96KB were taken by the kernel (including the >buffer cache etc...). But who were you developing for? Users who knew as much about the computer as you did, or "unsophisticated" users? (I.e., users with something better to do than bother themselves with the details of *your* job.) If you target unsophisticated users, you have to write software that spends most of its time: 1. explaining to the user what to do; and 2. analyzing the latest user error. If the software has a certain level of capability, then it must also have some minimum level of complexity. The only way to reduce the computer's share of this complexity is to shift it somewhere else, namely, onto the user's expertise, onto the telephone support personnel, onto the printed manual (which explains what the program is unable to explain for itself), onto the local guru, etc. What good is an OS or application that fits in 6KB, if it requires a super-expert to run it, if a user spends more time on the telephone and with the manual than getting results from the computer, and if it gives such illuminating error messages as "ERR xmbr843"? The code is not actually "small", then. It is just being subsidized by other essential systems. And those other systems are not getting cheaper every year. Most useful software today is frighteningly hard to install, learn, maintain, use, and REMEMBER. Most computer users therefore spend most of their time being confused, asking for help, looking things up, or trying to remember how they solved problem XYZ six months ago (which has now recurred). Not many computer systems or major applications are usable with less then a user's full-time attention. That's great if you can find someone who will pay you to do just one thing for the rest of your life. But once jobs get that specialized, they will be automated in the next six months. People only stay ahead of machines by being more flexible, and that means constantly learning and trying new things. >The problem we have now is that we are running the same thing twenty >years later when a laptop has got vastly more power and a more >sophisticated architecture than a PDP-11/34, and that the people doing >development are simply not of the caliber, or at least of the good >taste, of Kernighan and Ritchie, in language, compiler, and OS >architecture. The PDP-11/34 was a very costly machine in its day, relative to the average user's salary. Therefore it was good business to have the users log off for hours at a time and go look up the meaning of messages like "ERR xmbr843". The computer was so expensive that you wanted to prevent anyone from using it until *after* they had done all their thinking about the problem. Today, the laptop computer is so cheap that the user is losing money every time (s)he has to stop working and go hunt around for a printed manual. The laptop user also uses the computer for a vastly larger number of tasks than the PDP-11/34 could do. Since users have not gotten smarter in the last 20 years, they require their computers to be smarter. -- Dan Mocsny Snail: Internet: dmocsny@minerva.che.uc.edu Dept. of Chemical Engng. M.L. 171 dmocsny@uceng.uc.edu University of Cincinnati 513/751-6824 (home) 513/556-2007 (lab) Cincinnati, Ohio 45221-0171