[Info-vax] Viable versus ideal programming languages

[Dan Cross]

In article <t1fq1e$e3e$1 at dont-email.me>,
Dave Froble  <davef at tsoft-inc.com> wrote:
>On 3/23/2022 12:44 PM, Bill Gunshannon wrote:
>
>>
>> I wonder how much of this notion that small systems aren't useful
>> for anything but playing games contributed to companies like DEC
>> missing the boat when the micro world came along.
>
>At a guess, I'd say that gamers feel they need the most powerful systems.  They 
>would be wrong.  What they actually want is really good and fast graphics.
>
>If DEC had taken games seriously, they might have prospered.  Come up with 
>rather inexpensive systems affordable to individuals, and sold a lot of them. 
>DEC never had the concept of "cheap".

I saw a presentation by Olson once that I found prescient.

In a lot of ways, DEC had a vision that I actually find very
compelling.  It seemed to be a mixture of different systems of
varying power, all networked together, with support for multiple
user interfaces: some folks would be sitting in front of
powerful workstations, others in front of cheap serial
terminals; both would draw from services and resources provided
by more powerful server machines of different kinds.  It wasn't
cheap, but it was good.

DEC certainly seems to have missed the PC boat (or, rather, it
entered the race after it was already too late to win), much to
its detriment.  But one wonders whether, in the end, they were
"right", but just too far forward thinking for the time.

	- Dan C.