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From: gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: NeXT Limitations?
Message-ID: <61300051@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 24 Nov 90 18:21:00 GMT
References: <61300046@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Lines: 21
Nf-ID: #R:m.cs.uiuc.edu:61300046:m.cs.uiuc.edu:61300051:000:1065
Nf-From: m.cs.uiuc.edu!gillies    Nov 24 12:21:00 1990


My point is this.  It's not a personal computer if you cannot
personalize it.  It's not useful if some things are cast in stone.  I
don't care if NeXT breaks my custom code from release to release, what
I DO CARE is if NeXT software and system design limit me in what can
be done with my personal computer.

I want to be able to do research with my computer.  What if I want to
benchmark a new LISP program that mucks with virtual memory to do
garbage collection?  I know Mach (thank heavens) gives the user access
to virtual memory primitives, and this is good.  But what does the mach
and NeXTstep software limit the user from doing unnecessarily?  You
can say, "The User Should Not Do That To His System for Reason Blah
Blah Blah", but there are always users with the sophistication and the
canny to do clever things with their machine and get away with them, as
long as the system software is not overly limited.


A good paper to read on this subject is "End to End Arguments in
System Design" by Jerome Saltzer in ACM Transactions on Computer
Systems, 1982.