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From: pmk@hall.cray.com (Peter Klausler)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Gratuitous bashing of everyone's favorite monopoly
Message-ID: <583@hall.cray.com>
Date: Tue, 25-Aug-87 12:02:59 EDT
Article-I.D.: hall.583
Posted: Tue Aug 25 12:02:59 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 28-Aug-87 00:56:27 EDT
References: <855@tjalk.cs.vu.nl> <2683@hoptoad.uucp> <916@haddock.ISC.COM> <6333@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Organization: Cray Research, Inc., Mendota Heights, MN
Lines: 19
Summary: Chickens and eggs

In article <6333@brl-smoke.ARPA>, gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn ) writes:
> The really annoying thing is that IBM was on the committee that came
> up with the ASCII code, but they then proceeded to introduce EBCDIC
					^(1)
> and totally ignore ASCII for many years.  (Sounds like the Algol story,
							     ^(2)
> doesn't it?)

(1)	EBCDIC predates ASCII, I believe.
(2)	FORTRAN ('57) predates Algol ('58, '60).

Seems to me that IBM participated in the development of new technology
while continuing to support what their customers wanted to use.
Makes sense to me, although I'm not also not terribly happy with
the results.

Why were all these decisions made before I was born, anyway?

- Peter Klausler @ compiler development @ Cray Research, Inc. @ Mendota Heights, MN.