cliffhanger@cup.portal.com (clifford cliff heyer) (08/10/89)
I saw the drive RM06 mentioned in the current DEC Professional . I've never heard of it! Does anybody know of it?
pechter@scr1.UUCP (Bill Pechter) (08/11/89)
In article <21162@cup.portal.com> cliffhanger@cup.portal.com (clifford cliff heyer) writes: > >I saw the drive RM06 mentioned in the current >DEC Professional . I've never heard of it! > >Does anybody know of it? I've never heard of an RM06. However I did hear rumors of an RM04 (a slower RM05 to use on the non 11/70, Vax Massbusses). A Massbus drive for the 11/84's that are replacing all the 11/70's makes some sense. Perhaps the RSD80 from CDC on a Massbus for an RM03 replacement? Bill -- Bill Pechter -- Home - 103 Governors Road, Lakewood, NJ 08701 (201)370-0709 Work -- Concurrent Computer Corp., 2 Crescent Pl, MS 172, Oceanport,NJ 07757 Phone -- (201)870-4780 Usenet . . . rutgers!pedsga!tsdiag!scr1!pechter ** MS-DOS is CP/M on steroids, bigger bulkier and not much better **
forrest@phobos.sybase.com (Jon Forrest) (08/12/89)
In article <21162@cup.portal.com> cliffhanger@cup.portal.com (clifford cliff heyer) writes: > >I saw the drive RM06 mentioned in the current >DEC Professional . I've never heard of it! > >Does anybody know of it? This was obviously a reference to the RM05, and is mentioned correctly elsewhere in the article. I sometimes wonder about Carl Marbach and Dave Mallery. Their columns often contain minor mistakes that make me wonder if they're just typos or if these guys really don't know what they're talking about. Also, what they write, even without mistakes, makes me wonder the same thing. In my opinion Dec Professional is on the bottom of the Dec rag heap. Hardcopy used to be worse, full of vendor supplied articles, but then it was bought out by Digital News. Digital Review is my favorite. (These are my personal opinions and not those of Sybase.) Jon Forrest forrest@sybase.com {pacbell,sun,{uunet,ucbvax}!mtxinu}!sybase!forrest 415-596-3422
cliffhanger@cup.portal.com (clifford cliff heyer) (08/13/89)
Jon, I agree with you! Here is a letter I just mailed to them over ARIS. Don't know if they will print it, so here it is: TO: LETTER TO THE EDITOR RE: THE PROBLEMS WITH X PROGRAMMING/D. BYNON FROM: CLIFF HEYER Although the DECWindows program as discussed in "The Problems With X Programming" (DP, 8/89, P. 106) may frighten some, some additional comments are in order. 1) DECWindows in its present form is more a software engineering tool than it is a MIS DP applications tool. As time passes, this will change. Initially, the purpose is to get "systems software" ported to DECwindows. Later DEC will worry about "the rest of us." 2) The increase in the number of lines is not really that bad, depending on your point of view. For example, systems software typically has 300,000+ lines of source code. Even if you increase the user-interface code by 10-20 times, the total line count changes by less than 1%. 3) Keep in mind that C generates fewer machine instructions per statement than does typical application languages such as COBOL, for example, so those 4 pages of C are not the same as 4 pages of COBOL. 4) Numerous 'CASE' products have appeared in the UNIX world and on PCs for interactive generation of dialog boxes, windows, etc., and these tools output C stubs for use in your applications. In some cases they end up as compiled functions callable from COBOL, BASIC, etc., so that the user never actually has to use C. Eventually I predict VAXset will be expanded to include such tools, but in the meantime we'll have to do it "the old fashioned way." 5) Hot C programmers write 500+ lines of code a day and are not likely to worry about a extra pages of C code for DECWindows. ========== I think the folks at DEC Professional are not "engineers" but MBA types who have learned about computers from a user's point of view, and not from a solid engineering background. Thus engineers will always be able to pick out inaccuracies and inconsistencies in their writing. On the other hand, their publication has helped me many times as a computer "user" and I regard it highly from this point of view. (Have you used ARIS? It's TOUGH after using usenet!)