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From: ian@syacus.acus.oz.au (Ian Joyner)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.pascal
Subject: Re: Gotos are ok (Was Re: IMPLEMENT GOTO ACROSS MODULES IN TURBO PASCAL??)
Message-ID: <1991Jan30.230334.17433@syacus.acus.oz.au>
Date: 30 Jan 91 23:03:34 GMT
Article-I.D.: syacus.1991Jan30.230334.17433
References: <11656@j.cc.purdue.edu> <7147@tekgen.BV.TEK.COM> <11661@j.cc.purdue.edu> <1991Jan10.031015.15282@cs.mcgill.ca> <1991Jan10.122222.1013@uwasa.fi> <1991Jan16.005523.28337@syacus.acus.oz> <1991Jan21.233859.10468@syacus.acus.oz> <644@sun4dts.dts.in
Organization: ACUS Australian Centre for Unisys Software, Sydney
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e.philips.nl>

derek@sun4dts.dts.ine.philips.nl (derek) writes:

>with your comments about Macs and PCs you are actually being to sound like a
>bigot. Beware, I'm considering putting you in my kill file! (Is a smiley
>necessary?)

No, its not a matter of bigotry, rather history!

MS-DOS was derived from QDOS (for Quick and Dirty OS) from Seattle Computer
Systems. This was meant as an intermediate OS for 8080s until CP/M was
implemented on them. An enterprising Bill Gates seized upon the opportunity
to sell this to ibm. And full credit to him for arranging a perfect marriage.

Now the Xerox family of machines (including Sun, Apollo, Lisa, Mac, NeXT, etc)
were developed over a long period of time by visionaries such as Alan Kay,
Larry Tesler and Adele Goldberg. I regard them as a cut above Bill Gates
(who I still think was a smart cookie in his position, if only Xerox
had had an opportunist like Gates.)

I don't think we should tolerate any sacred cows in this industry, neither
MS-DOS nor Mac, nor Fortran nor Cobol, nor C, nor even Eiffel. Everything
has its time and place and everything will pass. I think we need to be
more discerning, and give credit where credit is due, appear more
fickle to the vendor, so that our customers have power, not the vendors.

Here's a smiley for you Derek.

References:

MS-DOS Encyclopaedia
SmallTalk-80 The Language and its Implementation. Goldberg and Robson
Mindstorms. Seymour Papert
Big Blue: IBM's use and abuse of Power. Richard DeLamarter

(Can someone suggest a more appropriate follow up group if required)
-- 
Ian Joyner                                     ACSNet: ian@syacus.oz
ACUS (Australian Centre for Unisys Software)   DNS:  ian@syacus.oz.au
Tel 61-2-390 1328      Fax 61-2-390 1391       UUCP: ...uunet!munnari!syacus.oz