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From: raveling@vaxb.isi.edu (Paul Raveling)
Newsgroups: comp.os.misc
Subject: Re: Religious OS arguments
Message-ID: <7628@venera.isi.edu>
Date: 24 Feb 89 18:34:49 GMT
References: <2685@eos.UUCP> <7612@venera.isi.edu> <2882@eta.unix.ETA.COM>
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Reply-To: raveling@isi.edu (Paul Raveling)
Organization: USC-Information Sciences Institute
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In article <2882@eta.unix.ETA.COM> rscott@woods.unix.eta.com (Richard Scott) writes:
>
>	Ah, but you haven't told us how trivial it is for you to port code 
>between the machines you talk about in ex. 1 and the machines mentioned in
>your ex. 2 (i.e. IBM running OS/360 <--> VAX running VMS)? Complete software
>compatability in the lines of machines *by the same manufacturer* is easy; UNIX
>is good in that it gives you a *reasonably* portable platform between machines
>of different companies. [vis-a-vis Bill Joy's keynote address at SUG, Winter '88]

	Actually the easiest ports I've done have been from
	[PC/MS]DOS to UNIX.  They've been easier than the typical
	UNIX-to-UNIX port.

	In truth, support for the same progamming language is
	by far the most important factor in porting noninteractive
	applications.  The next question is whether a standard
	such as X11 will succeed in producing portability for
	interactive code.


----------------
Paul Raveling
Raveling@isi.edu