mark@intek01.UUCP (Mark McWiggins) (10/14/88)
I keep hearing about Pick, the Super-Amazing combo O/S and database that can support unbelievable number of users on a tiny cheap DOSish machine ... I wasn't very interested up to now, mainly because (so the word went) a BASIC dialect was the only programming interface. But now I read/heard somewhere that there's a C interface, and even Btrieve. Is this true? Do you have any experience with this system, especially in a micro LAN environment? Thanks in advance for any Secrets. The fanatical adherents of Pick remind me of another cult that I've found beneficial and which shall go nameless ... -- Mark McWiggins UUCP: uunet!intek01!mark DISCLAIMER: I could be wrong. INTERNET: intek01!mark@uunet.uu.net (206) 455-9935
tbetz@dasys1.UUCP (Tom Betz) (10/19/88)
The only Pick software I've ever seen running (on some generic mini) was slow
as molasses. It took all day to process what I can do on my Apple /// network
(using UCSD Pascal) in a couple hours.
Anyway, do you really want to use an OS that requires you to write your
applications in BASIC?
--
MY CURRENT FAVORITE ADVERTISING LINES: |Tom Betz EAA#48267
"Look what they done to old Duke! |ZCNY, Yonkers, NY 10701-2509
Next year I'm plantin' corn." |UUCP: tbetz@dasys1.UUCP or
"It's not >that< crazy! Rosemary..." | ...!cmcl2!phri!dasys1!tbetzlocke@pdn.UUCP (Richard Locke) (10/20/88)
In article <360@intek01.UUCP> mark@intek01.UUCP (Mark McWiggins) writes: >I keep hearing about Pick, the Super-Amazing combo O/S and database that >can support unbelievable number of users on a tiny cheap DOSish machine ... I worked with the Pick system on a plain IBM PC in 84-85 (not at Paradyne!!!). I was not at all impressed. In fact, I was depressed! The PC was supporting two developers. If one of us did a compile, life slowed to a crawl. >I wasn't very interested up to now, mainly because (so the word went) a >BASIC dialect was the only programming interface. This was true with the system I worked on. Some of the problems with this were: 1) BASIC! yuck! 2) a limit of ~12K on source files (after that you had to delete comments ;-) 3) interpreted BASIC = comments slowing down execution, 4) file system subject to serious corruption due to power glitches, 5) no communication with DOS, DOS file system. [rumors: Is there a C interface, etc] I have no idea! -- Dick Locke Paradyne Corporation {uunet,peora}!pdn!locke Mail stop LF-207 Phone: (813) 530-8241 P.O. Box 2826 Largo, FL 34649-2826 The above has nothing to do with Paradyne.
pavlov@hscfvax.harvard.edu (G.Pavlov) (10/20/88)
In article <7039@dasys1.UUCP>, tbetz@dasys1.UUCP (Tom Betz) writes: > The only Pick software I've ever seen running (on some generic mini) was slow > as molasses. It took all day to process what I can do on my Apple /// network > (using UCSD Pascal) in a couple hours. > > Anyway, do you really want to use an OS that requires you to write your > applications in BASIC? > This is the level of information content that causes me to stay up nights read ing usent messages....... We do not use Pick in our applications, so I can't say that I have a micro program to compare it to (a very nice version, under a different name, runs on IBM PC's). But for someone who is willing to take a hard objective look at it, its integrated environment and ease of applications development may be ideal for their requirements. It's wide platform base may also be useful.
robert@pvab.UUCP (Robert Claeson) (10/22/88)
In article <7039@dasys1.UUCP>, tbetz@dasys1.UUCP (Tom Betz) writes: [ Misc. comments on the performance of PICK deleted ] > Anyway, do you really want to use an OS that requires you to write your > applications in BASIC? Actually, you can buy UniVerse, which is a PICK clone that runs on top of UNIX. I don't know if it's faster than PICK, but you're not limited to what PICK offers you (rumours has it that PICK only has a line-oriented editor). -- Robert Claeson, ERBE DATA AB, P.O. Box 77, S-175 22 Jarfalla, Sweden Tel: +46 758-202 50 Fax: +46 758-197 20 Email: robert@pvab.se (soon rclaeson@erbe.se)
dave@westmark.UUCP (Dave Levenson) (10/22/88)
If you're running MS-DOS, either single-user or networked, consider
Revelation. This is an operating environment that runs under MS-DOS
and implements a dialect of Pick. It emulates a typical
mini-computer with password-protected logins. A development version
supports code-generators, form generators, and report generators. A
run-time version is less expensive and excludes the generators.
Yes, at least for Revelation, you must use BASIC for applications
programming. But you don't do much in BASIC. The code-generation
tools make the source code, and you concentrate on the
user-interface and on your application.
--
Dave Levenson
Westmark, Inc. The Man in the Mooney
Warren, NJ USA
{rutgers | att}!westmark!davenick@aimed.UUCP (Nick Pemberton) (10/23/88)
In article <4655@pdn.UUCP>, locke@pdn.UUCP (Richard Locke) writes: > In article <360@intek01.UUCP> mark@intek01.UUCP (Mark McWiggins) writes: > ... > I worked with the Pick system on a plain IBM PC in 84-85 (not at Paradyne!!!). > I was not at all impressed. In fact, I was depressed! The PC was supporting > two developers. If one of us did a compile, life slowed to a crawl. > On a PC eh? That really doesn't surprise me. Ever seen unix run on a PC with more then one person and not crawl? Even this machine, a 286 at 12 MHz crawls when things get loaded (like just the news feed...) The pick os is actually much less taxing on a given machine then unix. For example, the ncr tower can run aprox. 3 times the number of concurrent users on pick (ADDS version) then can unix (this is empirical, of course, but easily observed) > >I wasn't very interested up to now, mainly because (so the word went) a > >BASIC dialect was the only programming interface. > > This was true with the system I worked on. Some of the problems with this > were: 1) BASIC! yuck! 2) a limit of ~12K on source files (after that you > had to delete comments ;-) 3) interpreted BASIC = comments slowing down > execution, 4) file system subject to serious corruption due to power glitches, > 5) no communication with DOS, DOS file system. > Well, BASIC is objectionable, I agree, but pick has gone some distance to ammend that. It *is* structured, it features dynamic linking of subroutines, and it is fantastic at database manipulation, which is the niche into which pick fits itself. I haven't seen any PICK machine with a 12 K limit on source code, and I've worked on a lot of them over the last 7 years (pick systems for AT, ADDS Mentor, HoneyWell Ultimate to name a few). Comments only slow down execution (by one opcode) if you leave them in, there is a compiler option to remove them. They are usually only left in if the program is to be used with the debugger, so that the debugger can keep track of where in the source it is executing. The file system shouldn't suffer at all in a reasonable hardware set up - like any virtual system, if the power is cut off and there is no means of getting whats in RAM back to disk, the file system will be corrupted. But even that is recoverable. There is communication with DOS if you are on the right package. I'd like to know what version of PICK you were running... Sounds ancient. Pick is definately limited, in that number crunching on it stinks (since the string is the only real data type until you hit the assembly level), and it doesn't have any real networking standards (although each major vendor has their own nets...). But given those two restrictions, I bet I could blow the pants off any unix program on equivalent hardwares.... Nick Pemberton ...utzoo!lsuc!aimed!nick
friedl@vsi.COM (Stephen J. Friedl) (10/25/88)
In article <330@pvab.UUCP>, robert@pvab.UUCP (Robert Claeson) writes: > (rumours has it that PICK only has a line-oriented editor). I don't believe this is correct; `Jet' is a word processor that appears to be fairly popular with the Pick folks. -- Steve Friedl V-Systems, Inc. +1 714 545 6442 3B2-kind-of-guy friedl@vsi.com {backbones}!vsi.com!friedl attmail!vsi!friedl ----Nancy Reagan on 120MB SCSI cartridge tape: "Just say *now*"----