[TUHS] A New History of Modern Computing - my thoughts

[George Michaelson]

I suspect because we believed we understood the pdp11 we felt we'd
understand a good operating system on it.

If more tertiary education people had been on other hardware of the day,
we'd probably have invented the same myths for that host.

G

On Mon, 29 Nov 2021, 10:22 am Clem Cole, <clemc at ccc.com> wrote:

> Rob, I offer a small tweak to your statement, that I hope you will consider
>
> On Sun, Nov 28, 2021 at 5:20 PM Rob Pike <robpike at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> The PDP-11 as an affordable commercial computer, now _that_ was important.
>>
> s/computer/mini-computer/
>
> I really believe that this distinction is important.  Bell coined the term
> in the late 1950s/early 1960s when he called it a minicomputer.  The key is
> that he meant >>minimal computer - in function and price<< (not small).
> (This would event eventual lead to Bell's law for the birth and death of
> computer classes).
>
> To me, the PDP-111 ISA  is the epitome the *minimal computer architecture*
> - just want you to need to get the job done be it commercial or
> scientific and it was affordable as you said.  The solution is elegant,
> nothing fancy, little extra added - just the right set of features for a
> system to do real work.  It was also extremely regular as Larry points out,
> so it was not filled with a ton of special cases.  It did have a few more
> features like addressing modes, and multiple registers that made it more
> complex than say an accumulator-based PDP-8.  But the small set of new
> features made sense and were* of** use for almost all programmers*.
> [FWIW: IMHO, most new features we add to Intel*64 is all for some special
> cases for a specific customer].
>
> I note that the VAX (was is the epitome of the CISC and while
> extraordinarily successful), has always been an easy target as way too
> complicated, filled with many special cases (just for the Fortran
> compiler, or for Cutler's as an assembly programmer).
>
> IMHO: C is also made from the same minimal ideal.    It took the
> simplicity of the B and added typing and better data structures, but did
> not overdo it.  Again, what was added was useful to almost all programmers.
>
> I note that while the follow-on to both the 11 (the Vax) and C (C++)
> became working horses, but both are ugly as can be, and neither would I
> call elegant.  I've used them both, however, I have moved on since that
> time.  I do pine for something more like a 64-bit PDP-11 (more in a
> minute), and still use C when I can in the kernel or Go when in userspace.
>
>
> Having kicked around DEC during some of the Alpha discussions, other than
> the original lack of byte addressing, I think the PDP-11 influenced the
> Alpha more than VAX did.  There was a definition -- why is the needed --
> thinking.  Keep it simple a minimal.
>
> As for Unix (since this is a Unix history list), again I think it is the
> minimal view I miss from Sixth and Seventh Edition.   I look at Linux and
> mostly turn green with how much has been lost from those days.    But like
> the PDP-11, I can not really go back.  My hope is that something will
> appear that is "good enough" and '"simple enough" to get people excited
> again.
>
> my 2 cents,
> Clem
> ᐧ
> ᐧ
>
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