gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu (05/24/89)
/* Written 2:53 pm May 21, 1989 by mo@prisma in m.cs.uiuc.edu:comp.sys.mac.programmer */ /* ---------- "Re: Response to <1989May11.193812.2" ---------- */ > Boy, are you confused. "Scout's Honor" programming environments are > just stupid. One "boo-boo" by some new piece of code and your machine > goes down in flames. Gee- my Macintosh does that ALREADY! On my Sun, > if I screw up, I get a core dump, but my window system continues to run, > .... > Ya know, it's really hard to understand what you find advantageous about > returning to early 1960's OS technology. > .... Some people believe that the early 1960's was the golden age of computing, when the programmer had full access to the guts of the machine, to do with as they please, from the front panel. These same people are working on advancing 1980's language, type-checking, and debugging technology, to give the computer back to the programmer, not some intrusive and restrictive third party called the operating system. People who forget history are doomed to repeat its mistakes. Protection WAS NOT invented to shield the programmer from his own mistakes, it arose to shield him from the mistakes or maliciousness of others, and to shield the operating system from crashes. The programmer can be shielded by a strongly-typed or type-safe language (not available in 1960's) rather than using all sorts of messy restrictive hardware gadgets and OS tricks. These hardware gadgets make sharing (like implementing window systems) and interprocess communication a mess. If your word processor crashes, you should scream at your word processor vendor for not using a robust language / development environment, for taking liberties with the machine, or for not testing their software intelligently and thoroughly.