From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!npois!ucbvax!C70:editor-people
Newsgroups: fa.editor-p
Title: Re: Improved support for Emacs in TOPS-20.
Article-I.D.: ucb.1337
Posted: Sat Jun 12 01:27:21 1982
Received: Sun Jun 13 03:58:00 1982
Reply-To: ople

>From POURNE@MIT-MC Sat Jun 12 01:25:37 1982
I quite agree and am delightedly surprised to discover
others believe the editor to be if not the most important class
of software, certainly among the top ones.
	However: I wonder about the remark implying that
distributed computing (lots of small computers, one to each
user, with a net to share big peripherals) is all that
expensive.  Is it?  A full micro with every bell adn whistle I
can imagine (except no hard disk and no printer) cannot cost
more than $4000 in any quantity.  Now true: this doesn't include
a terminal, or else one compromises the micro for the price;
But the micro can be a terminal with a video board and a monitor
and a keyboard; in the early days of micros that was the best
way to go for the money.
	Not being a programmer by trade, I don't know how
distracting it is to have to wait long after typing so see it
appear on the screnn; but that is the death of creative writing,
I think, and is one of the major reasons I no longer compose
computer articles on the net (even though doing so got me a lot
of good comments the couple of times I did it).
	Perhaps I haven't said anything that isn't implicit in
your piece: it does seem to me that ditributed computing is
preferable to the time-sharing notion.