Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ulowell!cg-atla!morrison From: morrison@cg-atla.UUCP (Steve Morrison) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: In defense of the VAX Summary: Let's hope the hardware of the 90's is more enjoyable Message-ID: <6710@cg-atla.UUCP> Date: 23 Feb 89 15:01:51 GMT References: <4592@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM> <2324@scolex.sco.COM> Organization: Agfa Compugraphic Division, Wilmington, Mass Lines: 41 In article <2324@scolex.sco.COM>, seanf@sco.COM (Sean Fagan) writes: > In article <1226@husc6.harvard.edu> reiter@harvard.UUCP (Ehud Reiter) writes: > >The most important thing about an architecture is that it > >should make it easy for people to write and run programs, and I don't think > >anyone has complaints about the VAX on this score. This contrasts with the > >IBM 370-class machines, which suffer greatly from lack of address space, > >which *is* very much an annoyance to the programmer and even the end-user. > As a softie that started on PDP-8's & PDP-11's, I greatly resented the VAX for being an overcomplicated machine that made writing software harder. I found the machine so offensive that I moved over to micros. Why not, the top selling mini in my area would become something I did not enjoy programming, my experiences with RSX-11M convinced me that VMS was going to be cumbersome to use (as was proved later when I had to use the beast for source control) and micros had advanced to the point that systems requiring medium-large software efforts could be implemented on them. I still miss the beautiful orthagonality of the base PDP-11 instruction set and think that the software development cost of not having such a programming model cannot be under- estimated. The task of writing a compiler becomes an unpleasant nightmare when "special" registers have to be used to optimize string moves, etc. As for UNIX, it started out as an inocuous development environment that I enjoyed because it did not get in the way, cluttering up my applications code with control blocks and their associated garbage. Alas poor UNIX, I knew you well... it has blossomed into the System V boat anchor and other layered variants that are incomprehensible that include "features" that are definately not in keeping with the original design philosophy, as I understand it. Both the hardware & software of the 80's represented a big step backward to me. The work coming out of Berkeley gives me hope for the 90's hardware. Unfortunately, software still appears to be on a downward spiral.