ernest@lenti.med.umn.edu (Ernest Retzel (1535 49118)) (03/18/91)
I am generally not a "post-er," but the recent operating system discussions have finally prodded me into it. First, I would like to identify myself as a card-carrying, working virologist. Second, [indulge me, please], I would like to make a public apology to Julie Ryals and Dave Kristofferson for some e-mail conversations in which I naively took them to task for something last fall [no one else is likely to understand that, but hopefully they will]. In following the OS discussion recently, I now have a better understanding of the situation. What pushed me to post was a recent article regarding "easy vs powerful operating systems," which was well-written and persuasive, but also somewhat disturbing and misleading; that it was subsequently applauded caused even more of a twinge. The first disturbing thing is that it sets up two classes of humanity, the Biologists, who work for a living, and the Power-User, the Programmer, the previously-mentioned Nemesis of Civilization, the System Administrator, and, probably, the forgotten System Analyst. I am not sure where the latter fit into life-forms generally, but it appears that all of Them Cannot Be Trusted. One cannot, apparently, cross the proverbial line without becoming Lost Forever. 8^) The second thing is that there is some apparent misunderstanding between operating systems and graphical use interfaces [GUI's]. The discussion mostly centers around Mac applications [programs] and compares them to UNIX, which is a bare-bones operating system, OVER WHICH can be layered a GUI. What is being compared, then, is not operating systems, but corporate philosophies: Apple enforces their idea of a standard, Sun and the rest [DEC, etc,etc,etc] allows the programmer or the user to make their choice. This thread was, in fact, initiated by a question/statement from Don Gilbert regarding exactly that choice [which I would like to see a summary of responses to sometime]. When you are discussing operating systems, however, it is kind of an apples-and-oranges discussion; a System Analyst friend of mine once made the offhand comment, "If it comes on a floppy disk, it is not an operating system." UNIX is something over 100 MB of disk space on its own. And, considering that, one really does not have to know much of it to *use* it. A few commands, and one is on their proverbial way. If one can do everything they want on a personal computer, fine; if one is doing mostly just word-processing on their computers, they are probably being underused; if, however, you are "bumping your head" personal computers, then it may in fact be time for some other solution, and that is most likely a UNIX machine of some sort. As Bill Pearson pointed out, the price-performance of workstations is really quite dramatic. The possibilities for using them are nearly endless. In our department, we have gone from one workstation to 15, acquired in ones and twos, *by popular demand.* Suns now outnumber either Macs or PC's [but not both, yet], and are replacing personal computers in individual labs. Even our secretaries use Suns [and UNIX...], and are, in fact, some of the strongest supporters of the system [because it saves them time...]. We are working on a very different paradigm than some of those that are expressed in previous posts; in those I am referring to, the opinion is that computers are something to be used when the Real Work is done, as analysis tools; our general opinion is that computational tools can be *part of* an experiment, and can, in fact, be used to *give direction* to experimental approachs. We are also truly net-based; locally, we have the Suns I mentioned above and seven disks totaling about 4 GB of space. Using UNIX built-ins, like Network File System [NFS], we can mount disks and use computers anywhere, and do. And I do not need to know about them on a personal basis; UNIX knows about them--that is something it is really good at. By way of example, the Minnesota Supercomputer Center has several resources that we use, specifically a Cray XMP and a Cray2 [512 *megawords* of RAM, in 64 bit words]; both of these are UNIX machines. They also have some 200 GB in their disk farm [think infinite...]. With a properly designed program and GUI, I can set up a program on a workstation here in the department, run the job on the Cray, see the graphical output on my workstation *as if it had run there,* and never really know, or care, where or how it happened. That is not to say that most programs were designed for this, and they need to be. Most programs do not operate in this mode [I am pleased to say that there are a fair group of programs that have been evolving here that do, however]. Intelligenetics, to their credit, started out this way, with workstation-based programs, some even making use of Sun Core Graphics. But we all wanted to treat the Suns like a VAX, so their programs devolved into TTY based programs, instead of evolving on the workstation track. Now, it sounds as if they are moving that way again, and that is really nice to hear. We are once again back at Don Gilbert's question; reality is, however, that building graphical interfaces costs money [see Chris Dow's comments]; I have been told that if you start from scratch, and it takes x hours to implement an algorithm, it might take 5x hours to do the I/O, and 25-50x hours to put a real interface on it. With the UNIX market so small, cost recovery is tough for any of the suppliers of commercial software. Will we *pay* for that GUI on that program we want? Maybe more to the point, will the granting agencies? I have, by the way, found it very easy to teach molecular biology to computer scientists, whether they are programmers, grad students, system analysts or faculty. Our problems, when *we* understand them, are almost intuitive to them. They can and do create some beautiful, usable solutions, sometimes beyond my own expectations. Try to hear Paul Bieganski, Dan Davison, Chris Dow, Brian Fristensky, Don Gilbert, Rob Harper, Dave Kristofferson, Bill Pearson, Tom Schneider, Brian Smith, Roy Smith, the NCIFCRF folks, the LANL folks, and the NLM-NCBI folks as they try to unfold what we could do; they are educating, not converting. Final aside--this is bionet.*software* -- OS's are software, as are GUI's, and I can't imagine a better forum to discuss them in. E-mail flames to me personally, or, preferably, to /dev/null. Cheers, Ernie Retzel Dept. of Microbiology University of Minnesota ernest@lenti.med.umn.edu