Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!rutgers!bellcore!faline!sabre!gamma!pyuxp!rruxa!gwl From: gwl@rruxa.UUCP (George W. Leach) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.arch Subject: Re: Was the 360 badly-designed? (was Re: Compatibility with EBCDIC) Message-ID: <294@rruxa.UUCP> Date: Tue, 25-Aug-87 10:04:47 EDT Article-I.D.: rruxa.294 Posted: Tue Aug 25 10:04:47 1987 Date-Received: Thu, 27-Aug-87 00:45:51 EDT References: <855@tjalk.cs.vu.nl> <2683@hoptoad.uucp> <916@haddock.ISC.COM> <1580@sol.ARPA> Organization: Bell Communications Research Lines: 51 Xref: mnetor comp.lang.c:3902 comp.arch:1923 In article <1580@sol.ARPA>, crowl@rochester.UUCP writes: > > I am not necessarily stating that the 360 architecture was well-designed, but I > am saying the architecture has shown flexibility and adaptability for many ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > years. If you wish to say the 360 architecture is bad, you must show why its ^^^^^ > adaptability is illusory. The 360 architecture has been implemented on > machines spanning roughly two orders of magnitude in performance. It has gone > from physical memory to virtual memory. It supported a virtual machine long > before many other architectures did. > I will not argue the architecture design issues. The 360 was the top of the line when it was introduced. I worked with one from 1980 thru 1983 and from a software development environment point of view (VM/CMS) it was terrible. UNIX is such a far superior programming environment to CMS that there is NO ARGUMENT here. What I would like to take issue with is the longevity of the 360/370 architecture. Is it really the adaptability and flexibility of the architecture or is it the fact that the huge customer base is tied into that IBM environment? There is a tremendous amount of $$$$ invested in COBOL, FORTRAN and PL/1 code on those beasts that CAN NOT be moved easily to another architecture. This is due to such nice IBM-ONLY features, such as EBCIDIC character sets. On the other hand, the $$$$ invested in code written in C under UNIX is easily ported (if written with portability in mind) to other architectures as they come along. Thus one can take advantage of new advances in computer architecture without the pain and cost of moving unportable code. > -- > Lawrence Crowl 716-275-8479 University of Rochester > crowl@cs.rochester.arpa Computer Science Department > ...!{allegra,decvax,seismo}!rochester!crowl Rochester, New York, 14627 George W. Leach Bell Communications Research New Jersey Institute of Technology 444 Hoes Lane 4A-1129 Computer & Information Sciences Dept. Piscataway, New Jersey 08854 Newark, New Jersey 07102 (201) 699-8639 UUCP: ..!bellcore!indra!reggie ARPA: reggie%njit-eies.MAILNET@MIT-MULTICS.ARPA From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere Dr. Seuss "One fish two fish red fish blue fish"