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From: @RUTGERS.ARPA:deutsch.PA@Xerox.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.works
Subject: Re: WORKS Digest   V5 #10
Message-ID: <792@topaz.ARPA>
Date: Tue, 26-Feb-85 11:47:29 EST
Article-I.D.: topaz.792
Posted: Tue Feb 26 11:47:29 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 28-Feb-85 12:11:22 EST
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Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.
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From: deutsch.PA@XEROX.ARPA

One of the comments on batch vs. interactive environments made a comment
I would like to underline: "What happened [in the batch world] is that
we were continually cutting back the scope of our projects."
One of the arguments that has been made for interactive environments
is that they allow us to continue to increase the scope of our ambitions,
as the power of hardware increases.  Indeed, the argument can be made
that without the more powerful programming tools, we would never have
been able to take advantage of the advances in hardware technology,
because the complexity of the problems we wanted to solve would have
overwhelmed us.

I'm sure there are people here who have had experience with developing
large, complex systems in both environments.  (For example, I don't know
if the airline reservation systems, the space program software, or the
software used to keep track of design and parts for a 747 airliner
were written in batch or interactive environments.)  Let's hear some real
examples.

For myself, I don't think I would have been able to get some of my systems
-- such as the interactive program verifier I wrote for my Ph.D. thesis,
approximately 30,000 lines of Lisp code -- running in a batch world.
But then again, much of the complexity of those systems comes from the fact
that they themselves are interactive, and must go to considerable
lengths to maintain data structures that allow them to respond quickly to
user input.  For that reason, I'm particularly interested in hearing
about how people get interactive systems (like airline or bank) running
in a world with few or no interactive programming tools.