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From: cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin)
Newsgroups: comp.arch,comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Universal OS (striving for flexibility)
Summary: No ten people are smart enough to design a good system.
Message-ID: <764@l.cc.purdue.edu>
Date: 30 Apr 88 11:09:45 GMT
References: <769@imagine.PAWL.RPI.EDU> <76700017@uiucdcsp> <843@actnyc.UUCP> <1556@vaxb.calgary.UUCP>
Organization: Purdue University Statistics Department
Lines: 83

In article <1556@vaxb.calgary.UUCP>, radford@calgary.UUCP (Radford Neal) writes:
> In article <762@l.cc.purdue.edu>, cik@l.cc.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin) writes:
| 
| > ... The language, shell, window, editor, etc. developers
| > should try to find out everything that a programming genius would consider
| > including (and do not rely on what one genius wants; ask everybody) and try
| > to include it _all_.  In addition, the (whatever) should be designed so that
| > any used can expand it easily, because I can not tell you today about the
| > feature which I will consider "obviously" needed tomorrow.
| > 
| > -- 
| > Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907
  
> GAK! Have you ever _tried_ designing, and implementing, a language, 
> editor, etc.?

I am not in a position to implement a language.  I have succeeded in
designing an assembler for a particular machine, which actually could
be easily made semiportable.  It is not that dissimilar from CAL, the
Cray assembly language.  The major problem with the languages, editors,
etc., is the fantastic number of conventions.  I doubt that there is any
language which has less conventional notation than any branch of mathe-
matics.  And the conventions of the languages are not usually not in an
"alphabetical" arrangement, so that one can deduce one convention from
the others.  The conventions of editors are worse; a given letter on one
has a vastly different meanin from the same on another.

If you look carefully at the part of my posting quoted, you will see that
I do not believe that a few people have the intelligence, knowledge, and
imagination to design a language, editor, etc.  How many of the screen
editors allow one to move vertically beyond the present scope of the line?
How many allow one to tie two lines together (i.e., to allow the motion of
characters in one line to move those in another)?  Why is there no WYSIWYG
editor which produces its output in such a way that it can be translated to
another system?

> The last thing you want to do is include everything
> anybody has ever thought might possibly be a good idea.

Of course, one cannot include everything.  But one can facilitate the 
addition of those things.  Many mathematics papers introduce notation
unknown to the reader.  Some of this even persists.  If a mathematician,
or group of mathematicians, attempted to force the notation of a field,
this effort would be profoundly resisted.  If they suggest a notation,
they may or may not succeed, and it is quite possible that the terminology
will be later modified.


> 
> As for "extensibility", it is much over-rated. Somehow, it always seems
> that the really useful modifications are beyond the capabilities of the
> extension mechanism. 

This means that the extension mechanism is too weak.  Most extension
procedures are overly restrictive, and do not assume that the user wants
to, say, introduce an operation which is not of the type envisaged by the
language designers.

> A universal operating system will be designed when someone very clever,
> imaginative, and artistic creates a reasonably simple model of computer 
> use that encorportates the needs of all users and is economically
> implementable in the technology of the day. If this should ever occur,
> the universal model will be much more likely to encorporate _none_ of
> the ideas of past "programming geniuses" than to encorporate them all.
> 
>     Radford Neal

A moderately universal operating system will be designed when the ideas of
hundreds of clever, imaginative, and artistic people, who know the inadequacies
of their ideas, are combined, probably informally, by people who are likewise
aware of their inadequacies, and are willing to make allowances for it.  If
you are arrogant enough to say that someone should not use a given construct,
you are unable to design even a fair system.  If you think you have all the
answers, you cannot design a fair system.  I have specifically argued against
the idea that there is even a complicated model of computer use that encorpor-
ates the needs of even a majority of the intelligent users, and the technology
of today changes so rapidly that Radford's ideas can only produce obsolete
systems.

-- 
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907
Phone: (317)494-6054
hrubin@l.cc.purdue.edu (ARPA or UUCP) or hrubin@purccvm.bitnet