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From: doug@escher.UUCP (Douglas J Freyburger)
Newsgroups: net.columbia
Subject: Re: Old fashion computing practices @ NASA
Message-ID: <51@escher.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 17-Aug-85 00:09:06 EDT
Article-I.D.: escher.51
Posted: Sat Aug 17 00:09:06 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 20-Aug-85 04:53:32 EDT
References: <1079@cbdkc1.UUCP>, <1073@ames.UUCP> <1006@hou2h.UUCP>
Organization: NASA/JPL, Pasadena, CA
Lines: 34

> A film was produced and shown at several centers describing the
> "crisis" in software engineering.  All these efforts lead me to
> believe that Headquarters has perhaps realized that something
> needs to be done NASA-wide to help the situation.
> 
> I am not aware of any systems running UNIX yet.

There are plenty of unix machines at JPL, with "escher" on
the net, and at least one other (in robotics) to follow by
the end of the year.  There are also several Symbolics
machines at JPL now.  No mainframes newer than UniHack
1100s (Sperry, now), though.  NASA in general IS working a
catch-up game with computers now.  We're getting better,
but we have a long way to go.

There is a huge project that was speced in Ada before Ada
compilers existed, so last year they agreed to do it in
ForTran.  The memo said that the ForTran code should not be
self-documenting, but should be read-through with the spec
and the PDL side-by-side.  Does it maybe sound like someone
in management still doesn't believe still software
modernization is a good idea? :-)
-- 

Doug Freyburger		DOUG@JPL-VLSI, DOUG@JPL-ROBOTICS,
JPL 171-235		...escher!doug, doug@aerospace,
Pasadena, CA 91109	etc.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed above are far too
ridiculous to be associated with my employer.

Unix is a trademark of Bell Labs, VMS is a trade mark of
DEC, and there are others that I'm probably forgeting to
mention.