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Re: [Plug] PLUG List Nettiquite - Propriety, MS-bashing, etc.
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-----Original Message-----
From: Gregory.Josephs@phila.gov <Gregory.Josephs@phila.gov>
>Back in 1981 when the IBM PC first came out, you could key in programs to
run
>against ROM Basic, or you could choose one of three disk operating
systems -
>CP/M, MS-DOS, or (as I recall) an engine to run Berkeley p-code. CP/M-80
Actually, it was the UCSD p-system, not Berkeley (small nit, but as long as
I'm here...)
>But when P.C. hardware was finally powerful enough to support a windowing
>product, there was no guarantee that Microsoft would come out on top. IBM
gave
>them a run for their money with OS-2, and we are all lucky that IBM failed.
??? Care to explain this one? MS & IBM designed OS/2 together, and it was a
far
superior system to Windows. However, it was a lot more complicated and took
a
lot longer to write than either MS or IBM expected (sound familiar? It
will...), so
Bill & Co decided to come out with a quick-n-dirty windowing system that
didn't
multitask too well but would be available long before OS/2 hit the streets.
MS
grabbed market/mind share and never looked back. OS/2 is still better than
Windows, but Windows is "good enough" -- enough so that nobody is going to
give up their installed software/paradigm base.
>There were other would-be windowing systems, some based on MS-DOS and some
>independent (remember the Commodore Amiga?), but none could beat
Microsoft's
The Amiga (as mentioned before) was a complete computer system and was never
an option for PC hardware (being based on the Moto 68000 instead of the
Intel 8086).
Perhaps you're thinking of GEOS, which was available for both the PC and the
Atari
ST line?
>business plan - aggressive price/performance, backward compatibility, and
>windowing apps (MS Word was developed in-house, while Excel was purchased).
MS Word wasn't developed as a windowed app, I remember running Word 2.0 on
XTs when I was a lot littler kid. Excel was actually first developed for/on
the Macintosh
(I believe it was originally called WingZ, don't remember the company
though).
Another major hit on size and performance
>is due to the move to object-oriented software. I am not enthusiastic
about all
>this objectifying, but the big thinkers (software engineers and the like)
seem
>to think it is unavoidable for systems with many millions of lines of code.
Actually, the bloat is from MFC, the Microsoft Foundation Classes. The
canonical
"Hello, world!" app is over 1M when compiled with MFC. It's roughly
equivalent to
packing your entire wardrobe for an overnight business trip because you
don't know
what you're going to want to wear. Properly designed and written
object-oriented
code is no larger than "traditionally" (structured-analysis-oriented) code,
and can
be significantly smaller if done with a good team.
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