Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!hellgate.utah.edu!uplherc!wicat!sarek!gsarff From: gsarff@sarek.UUCP (Gary Sarff) Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: IBM RISC Message-ID: <00426@sarek.UUCP> Date: 3 Mar 90 04:13:14 GMT References: <9376@portia.Stanford.EDU> <00405@sarek.UUCP> Organization: Programmers in Exile Lines: 27 In article , schwartz@shire.cs.psu.edu (Scott E. Schwartz) writes: >In article <00405@sarek.UUCP> gsarff@sarek.UUCP (Gary Sarff) writes: >>There seem to be two different camps here. I have seen numerous postings in >>this group saying "architecture/machine xxx (sparc,mips,...) will do better, >>look at all the applications/software base we have for the xxx architecture." >>The poster above, says porting is nothing more than recompiling. We can't >>have it both ways. > >Don't take my word for it, look at recent history. Three years ago a >Sun4 was just a wet dream. Now SPARC is Sun's flagship architecture. >If porting software was that serious a problem we'd know it. Ditto for >MIPS, ibm RT, Moto 88K, etc, of course. Granted, the key to all this >is coding applications in a high level language and for a portable OS. > How did _I_ get involved in this? I was merely pointing out the different opinions of two groups here, and now this. 8-) (I have also received email from a person who also seems to have misunderstood my post.) All I was saying was that _IF_ one says that porting is easy, _THEN_ one may not logically say that any benefit accrues to any particular architecture because of the software that is available on a platform using that architecture. I have known people to use software availabilty argument to show the superiority of one machine over another. I was not speaking to the point of the ease or difficulty of porting software. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- I _DON'T_ live for the leap!