[comp.misc] UNIX vs BS/2, DDJ article

bob@imspw6.UUCP (Bob Burch) (12/16/88)

From Ted Holden, HTE:

.........................


From: Todd Merriman: Sales Technologies Inc., Atlanta, GA
 
 
>
>       I felt deep disappointment upon reading Ray Duncan's article on
>       "Writing OS/2 Applications with I/O Privileges" in the December DDJ.
>       Mr. Duncan prefaces the article with warnings about the "epic amounts
>       of confusion, misinformation, and disinformation" concerning
>       comparisons between OS/2 and Unix; and then he proceeds to perpetuate
>       "epic amounts of confusion ... et. al.".
>
>       For instance, I don't believe that "writing Unix applications in
>       anything but C .... is nearly in impossible", and I daresay neither do
>       the many third-party publishers of Pascal, Ada, COBOL, C, FORTRAN, and
>       BASIC compilers for Unix.
>
>       etc. etc. etc.
>
>       As far as I am concerned, Mr. Duncan destroyed all his credibility in
>       the first two paragraphs of his article,  and I wouldn't even bother
>       reading the rest.
>
>       I am used to seeing better technical writing in DDJ.
>
 
I don't know that I am.  I mean, I'm starting to believe that a great many
of the mag editors and columnists out there are a bunch of squirrels and
d___-heads who lack the technical competance to see the big pictures as
they emerge in our industry.  "OS/2, Building for the Future" etc. etc.
Bull shit!!  I don't see any future in OS/2 at all, and the single biggest
and most obvious reason is one which I have yet to see in any magazine
article.  It is the following:  in a year or two, vertually all mid-sized
machines will be running UNIX;  the idea of allowing DEC, HP, Perkin Elmer,
IBM etc. to each continue selling their own little proprietary OSs for minis
is simply no longer acceptable to the US government as of right now, and will
obviously not be acceptable to most corporations either.
 
Managers a year or two hence will increasingly see the following situation:
mid-sized machines running UNIX and 386/486 based desktop machines which cry
out for a real OS and multi-tasking applications, but which way to go?!?!
Do I run OS/2 on the micros and forever have to keep track of and keep track
of connecting two entirely different software worlds, or do I simply let
everything run UNIX, with simple uucp connections between the desktop and
the mid-sized machines?  I clain you don't need to be Albert Einstein to
figure this one out, and that BS/2 will lose this one first time, every
time.
 
Ted Holden
HTE