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From: mats@dual.UUCP (Mats Wichmann)
Newsgroups: net.micro
Subject: Re:  IBM vs VAX/unix
Message-ID: <371@dual.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 20-Mar-84 10:45:17 EST
Article-I.D.: dual.371
Posted: Tue Mar 20 10:45:17 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 21-Mar-84 02:44:09 EST
References: <17659@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Organization: Dual Systems, Berkeley, CA
Lines: 75

In the midst of this topic I want to toss in another tidbit. UC Berkeley
was just given a rather large grant from IBM, which will take the form
of a s**t load of PC's. Nobody quite knows what the disposition will be
yet; everything is still in the formative stages. *BUT*, the Physics Depart-
ment has been using the University's computing facilities the past few years
because they have never gotten the money to replace their old IBM 1620 (yes, 
you read that right!!!); now it looks like they will never get their own 
machine because people are starting to say "why should we buy a large 
expensive machine, when we can get everybody a PC for their desk". The PC 
clearly does NOT meet the needs of large number crunching applications that
physicists and astronomers, to name two groups, are likely to perform. But 
becuase of the easy availability of the PC's, it looks like they may not be 
able to get funding for a machine to do these sorts of things. The problem
here seems to be that the sort of hype surrounding the PC, and other
similar machines, is creating a blindness amongst the decision-makers
(who are typically NOT computer users to any great degree) to the total
needs to their computing environment. By all means, use a PC if it is
appropriate for your needs, but let's not completely ingnore the need
for larger computational machines as well.


Another perspective is my own. When I was a student, competition for
the computing facilities at UC was fierce (although not quite as bad as
it is today). All undergraduate classes were confined to a bunch of PDP 
11-70's, only one of which belonged to the CS dept. outright. The purpose
was to provide a programming environment for testing out certain concepts
being taught in the classes. This environment could be provided by a micro
of the ilk of an IBM PC. Basically, what I needed for COURSE work was
the pascal interpreter/compiler, a c compiler, editor, and a couple
of other utilities (program beautifiers, printer spooler). Most of what
I learned about UNIX, and what made me employable as I came out of college,
was done on my own time, by browsing through the system and trying various
things out. Trying to put each student on an individual machine almost
eliminates this aspect - which is there for anyone who cares to use it
right now. With a small disk on the system, the amount of stuff that
can be stored permanently is quite limited. I had the opportunity to
browse through those portions of several huge disks which were not
protected - and managed to learn quite a bit from that. I would not
want to give this up. I don't really object to some of the load
being offloaded onto smaller machines, but not the entire curriculum.
And the lower-level the machine, the less the value to the student. Thinl
of it this way - most of you are involved with the UNIX system in some
way or another. If it were your decision to hire, say four years from
now when the current batch of undergrads have finished college, a 
programmer who had done all of his course work on one machine only, what 
would look more attractive:

1) Apple II
2) IBM PC Running MS/DOS
3) IBM PC running PC/UX
4) 68000-based machine with UNIX System V or BSD 4.2
5) VAX 11/780

MY contention is that the Apple is already obsolete, and the technology of
the PC is already very near to it. The 68000 or the VAX, on the other hand,
present lots of interesting features, that even if nobody is building those
particular machines any more, would seem to me to bode well to picking up
whatever the current technology is. Four years from now, probably all of
those machines will be near obsolete.

Okay, just my opinion, but certainly grounds for some thought, isn't it???
If it were my decision, the only way I would put students on something
like the PC would be if they were truly well networked together with
some bigger machines, such as Vaxen, so that the resources were there for
those who needed/wnated them.



	    Mats Wichmann
	    Dual Systems Corp.
	    ...{ucbvax,amd70,ihnp4,cbosgd,decwrl,fortune}!dual!mats

  It now became apparent (despite the lack of library paste)	 
  that something had happened to the vicar;	[ Edward Gorey ]