[Info-vax] New VSI Roadmap (yipee!)

[William Pechter]

In article <cllt4nFrc48U1 at mid.individual.net>,
Bill Gunshannon <billg999 at cs.uofs.edu> wrote:
>In article <md2ssm$kpk$1 at dont-email.me>,
>	David Froble <davef at tsoft-inc.com> writes:
>> lists at openmailbox.org wrote:
>>> On Mon, 02 Mar 2015 12:57:47 -0500
>>> David Froble via Info-vax <info-vax at rbnsn.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> lists at openmailbox.org wrote:
>>>>>> I can't imagine ever using floating point in a new money handling
>>>>>> application these days given all the other options available.
>>>>> It was *never* acceptable!
>>>>>
>>>> Even when there was no other options?
>>> 
>>> Especially when there was no other option.
>>> 
>>> Integers with software scaling (i.e. treat all amounts as cents) would have
>>> probably been better depending on what calculations and how many
>>> calculations were involved and what integer types were available. But if
>>> you had no integer type big enough to represent the largest amount as
>>> cents that is a real problem and strongly suggests the solution should not
>>> be coded on that platform.
>> 
>> Ok, let me see if I can understand this attitude ..
>> 
>> If you can't do it the way you consider "proper", then don't do it at 
>> all?  Gee, I could have been a man of leisure.  Poor man of leisure.
>> 
>> Integers, huh?  Let me see, -32768 to 32767, yeah, that's more than 
>> enough to show the company's monthly sales.
>> 
>> I'm wondering about your age, because you don't seem to have much of an 
>> idea what type of computing resources was available in the early 1970s.
>> 
>> I'll say it once more.  We used what we had, and we made it work, and 
>> IT'S WORKED WELL FOR OVER 40 YEARS!!!  That's one thing more recent 
>> stuff cannot say, and will probably never be able to say.
>
>My favorite response to this kind of stuff is: "Hindsight is always 20/20."
>
>Anecdote time!!
>
>One of my early tasks as an application programmer was to write
>a system to emulate the online data entry system for a microcomputer
>with the idea that at the end of the day all the data would be
>uploaded.  Reasoning being that the serial lines used by the data
>entry clerks were a rare and expensive resource.  I got assigned the 
>task for one very simple reason.  My peers were all mainframe
>programmers, CDC, Honeywell and Univac.  The target microcomputer
>was a Terak.  LSI 11/02 with 28K Words of memory (minus the I/O
>page of course) and SS/DD 8" floppies.  My peers were unanimous in
>the opinion that nothing practical could be done with such limited
>resources.  I was already playing with Z80's at home and was quite
>experienced at shoehorning programs into small memory spaces.  :-)
>I did it all in UCSD-Pascal.
>It got to be even more fun when I set up the Terak system on my desk
>with 4 8" floppy drives and started doing COBOL under RT-11.
>
>bill
>
>-- 
>Bill Gunshannon          |  de-moc-ra-cy (di mok' ra see) n.  Three wolves
>billg999 at cs.scranton.edu |  and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.
>University of Scranton   |
>Scranton, Pennsylvania   |         #include <std.disclaimer.h>   

There was an RT11 Cobol... Tell us more 8-).
I knew about Dibol... didn't know about Cobol.

Bill

-- 
-- 
Digital had it then.  Don't you wish you could buy it now!
pechter-at-gmail.com  http://xkcd.com/705/