[Info-vax] Viable versus ideal programming languages

[Bill Gunshannon]

On 3/24/22 08:42, Dan Cross wrote:
> 
> 
> In seriousness?  Amoeba was an interesting research system 30
> years ago.  These days, I'd think a cluster of Pi's running Plan
> 9 would be more interesting (note that Sape Mullender went to
> Bell Labs and worked on plan9 after working on Amoeba).

We ran both Amoeba at the University.  Had a couple of grad
students do their thesis on it.  Very impressive to watch the
cluster move jobs around based on available resources.  Was
disappointed when all the work on it stopped for no apparent
reason other than, in typical academic fashion, people tired
of it.  I think it had great potential and I think technology
has reached a point where it would be a real asset.  A rack
of Pi's occupies a lot less space and consumes a lot less
energy than racks of Sparcs.  :-)

We did Plan9 as well.  I think I still have all the original
software and manuals from it.  While interesting I never saw
the capabilities in it that Amoeba had.  Just looked like another
(stranger!) version of Bell Labs Unix.  I certainly didn't see
the support for parallelization in Plan9 that I saw in Amoeba.
Might be interesting to take another look at that, too.

Your list of older systems was impressive.  Mine matches most
of it.  I still do real PDP-11's, real VAX, Sparc, and emulated
I do PDP-11's VAX and Pr1me. (I used to maintain OS and software
on a bunch of 850's and always liked it, even with its quirks.)
But, as you saw, I also do a lot of older small systems.  I have
all of the TRS-80 models.  Some SBC CP/M machines.  And, like
everyone :-) piles of PC's running pretty much anything you can
run on them.  It keeps me busy as I am unlikely to make the cut
on anyone's resume search at my age.  :-)

bill