From: Steven L Baur <steve@miranova.com>
Date: Thu, 2 May 1996 20:57:25 +0800
To: dlv@bwalk.dm.com (Dr. Dimitri Vulis)
Subject: Re: The Joy of Java
In-Reply-To: <5y40mD297w165w@bwalk.dm.com>
Message-ID: <m2afzr5yl0.fsf@deanna.miranova.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


>>>>> "Dimitri" == Dimitri Vulis <dlv@bwalk.dm.com> writes:

Dimitri> (No cryptorelevance, but neither is anything else on this
Dimitri> list anymore)

Ditto.  I've tried to apply some Java relevance though.

Dimitri> abostick@netcom.com (Alan Bostick) writes:
>> > to portability...what the world might have looked like for the past 15
>> > years has the UCSD p-system succeeded instead of MS-DOS)

>> What a horrifying thought!  UCSD p-system actually made MS-DOS look good.

Dimitri> My recollection is that when IBM first started selling IBM
Dimitri> PC, they offered a choice of (at least) 3 operating systems
Dimitri> right from the start: UCSD p-system, CP/M-86 or PC-DOS.  IBM
Dimitri> didn't do anything to prompte PC-DOS over the other two. It
Dimitri> won fair and square in the marketplace because the other two
Dimitri> were even worse crap. (Later versions of CP/M-86 got much
Dimitri> better.)

This is half incorrect.  PC DOS was released with a lead time of about
9 months prior to the release of the other O/Ses.  This was enough to
give it a market share it has never looked back on.  There was plenty
of speculation in PC Magazine and Byte that this was *exactly* what
IBM intended all along.  It helped that the alternatives were
delivered as virtual cripples with no support software as well.

The P-System released for IBM PCs was less functional than the Apple
][ version that ran on 64 or 128k with bank switching, even by the
time of DOS 2.0.  About the only application it ever really had was
Context MBA which was quickly overtaken by Lotus 1-2-3 & company.

I wrote three disk device drivers for the Apple ][ UCSD P-System based
on documentation of dubious origin, and hated every second of it.
Much of the interface was hidden, and (on a 6502 remember) reserved
all of the precious 0 page for its own use.  It was a half-interesting
idea, but definitely in the same class with PC-DOS -- How Not to Write
an Operating System.

The Java relevance would be that given the current lead in marketing
Sun has, even if a technically superior solution arose right now, it
might have enough of a disadvantage in lead to never catch up and
become popular.  Technically superior products don't always win, look
at MS DOS/Windows/NT/95 and VMS, albeit from opposite ends of the
technical superiority spectrum.

-- 
steve@miranova.com baur
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