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.