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From: chenr@tilt.FUN (Ray Chen)
Newsgroups: net.cse
Subject: Re: AT&T 6300 at UVM
Message-ID: <288@tilt.FUN>
Date: Tue, 14-May-85 22:05:08 EDT
Article-I.D.: tilt.288
Posted: Tue May 14 22:05:08 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 17-May-85 04:37:03 EDT
References: <109@nvuxf.UUCP>
Reply-To: chenr@tilt.UUCP (Ray Chen)
Organization: Princeton University EECS Dept
Lines: 58

Keywords:

In article <109@nvuxf.UUCP> markg@nvuxf.UUCP (M. Guzdial) writes:
>Obviously, you are both excellent computer scientists working on complex
>applications requiring a good deal of CPU horsepower.  That's great, but
>most users DON'T have those sort of requirements, and burdening those users
>who don't have these requirements with either not having a machine or
>paying the bucks for one that comes up to your high standards is unfair.

Mr. Guzdial,

I think you underestimate the number of people who really USE
computers.  I'm not talking about cpu cycles and disks alone, but also
about tools and such available only in a Unix-style environment.

Now, the following figures are rough estimates and not official but...
Over the past 2 years each year at Princeton we've had --

45-80 people who take the undergrad operating systems course
25-40 people who take the undergrad compiler course
20-30 people who take a graphics course
15 people or so who take a course in AI
15 people or so who take a course in natural language processing
10-20 (?) people who do independent work for a professor

The year I took the OS course, the final project was writing a
stripped-down, multi-tasking, Unix-style kernel.  The next year
I think it was a queuing simulation.  The compiler people write
compilers.  My year we implemented a full Algol-style language
(arrays, subroutines, scoping, the whole bit) in LISP.  This
year, they're implementing a somewhat stripped down version of C
using lex and yacc.

The operating systems course and compiler course are considered to be
"core" courses for computer science majors.  Independent work
is "strongly suggested" and will soon be required.

A list of independent CS projects include design and implementation of
a window-oriented editor, investigating Chinese character recognition,
investigation of hidden surface and shading algorithms, investigating
the behavior of cellular automata, implementing an ethernet driver,
investigating crash recovery mechanisms, design and implementation
of a cellular automata simulation machine.

I think that these projects are all in progress now and I'm sure I've left
out quite a few more projects that I don't know about.

I submit that a 6300 in the UVM configuration would be virtually useless
for most of the CS majors at Princeton after the fall semester of their
sophmore year.

Now life may be easier at other schools.  Maybe at other places, with
the proper curriculum and care, for some CS majors, the useful lifetime
of a 6300 could be streched beyond a year and a half.  Maybe.  Is what
you gain by forcing everybody to buy one computer worth driving away
the rest of the computer science majors who don't want to be forced to
pay $2000 for something that they won't be able to really use?

	Ray Chen
	princeton!tilt!chenr