Re: new SUMacC release and wonder economics
Posted: December 20th, 1984, 2:57 am
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From: info-mac@uw-beaver (info-mac)
Newsgroups: fa.info-mac
Subject: Re: new SUMacC release and wonder economics
Message-ID:
Date: Wed, 21-Nov-84 23:31:10 EST
Article-I.D.: uw-beave.2311
Posted: Wed Nov 21 23:31:10 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 28-Nov-84 03:36:48 EST
Sender: yenbut@uw-beave
Organization: U of Washington Computer Science
Lines: 43
From: Bill Croft
Date: Tue, 20 Nov 84 20:51 EST
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: new SUMacC release and wonder economics
To: Bill Croft , [email protected]
*From: DPR (David P Reed)
In every organization I have worked for, academic or
industrial, the per-programmer cost of the machine was $20K or
more, for a timeshared VAX type machine. If you include the
costs of airconditioning, etc. it gets higher. I love the
claim that SUMacC lowers the per programmer cost from around
$5K (or even $10K depending on how you count it) for a cadillac
Lisa-based development system. Only Reagan is better at this
kind of voodoo economics. The whole wonder of workstations and
personal computers is that you can deliver better performance
and responsiveness to the user at the same or lower cost per
user than for timeshared systems.
And while I am less than thrilled with the particular
mouse-based editor Apple chose for the Lisa, surely in the long
run one can produce better tools on the Lisa/Fat MAC than the
ancient stuff that passes for wonderful on UNIX in its
timeshared, 80x24, monospaced, character-only, mouseless form.
But I suppose UNIX and its religion will continue to be adopted
by those who want to live in the past.
----
I agree with you, I would prefer developing applications
in (very small) Smalltalk on a standalone (very large) Fat Mac.
However until Alan Kay gets finished, what do we do?
I find UNIX's toolbox (cshell, make, emacs, diff, grep, lpr, etc.)
much more friendly than the Lisa workshop. Have you tried
diff, grep, or make / shell files on the workshop? UNIX also is
more friendly than many of the Mac standalone C development environments.
There may be a difference between user-friendly and programmer-friendly.
As far as costs go, I was refering to 'incremental' costs for
someone who already has access to UNIX and a Mac. I was not encouraging
timesharing systems by any means. Some people are using SUMacC on
SUN, Metheus, etc. workstations.
Posting-Version: version B 2.10 UW 5/3/83; site uw-beaver
Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxj!houxm!vax135!cornell!uw-beaver!info-mac
From: info-mac@uw-beaver (info-mac)
Newsgroups: fa.info-mac
Subject: Re: new SUMacC release and wonder economics
Message-ID:
Date: Wed, 21-Nov-84 23:31:10 EST
Article-I.D.: uw-beave.2311
Posted: Wed Nov 21 23:31:10 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 28-Nov-84 03:36:48 EST
Sender: yenbut@uw-beave
Organization: U of Washington Computer Science
Lines: 43
From: Bill Croft
Date: Tue, 20 Nov 84 20:51 EST
From: [email protected]
Subject: Re: new SUMacC release and wonder economics
To: Bill Croft , [email protected]
*From: DPR (David P Reed)
In every organization I have worked for, academic or
industrial, the per-programmer cost of the machine was $20K or
more, for a timeshared VAX type machine. If you include the
costs of airconditioning, etc. it gets higher. I love the
claim that SUMacC lowers the per programmer cost from around
$5K (or even $10K depending on how you count it) for a cadillac
Lisa-based development system. Only Reagan is better at this
kind of voodoo economics. The whole wonder of workstations and
personal computers is that you can deliver better performance
and responsiveness to the user at the same or lower cost per
user than for timeshared systems.
And while I am less than thrilled with the particular
mouse-based editor Apple chose for the Lisa, surely in the long
run one can produce better tools on the Lisa/Fat MAC than the
ancient stuff that passes for wonderful on UNIX in its
timeshared, 80x24, monospaced, character-only, mouseless form.
But I suppose UNIX and its religion will continue to be adopted
by those who want to live in the past.
----
I agree with you, I would prefer developing applications
in (very small) Smalltalk on a standalone (very large) Fat Mac.
However until Alan Kay gets finished, what do we do?
I find UNIX's toolbox (cshell, make, emacs, diff, grep, lpr, etc.)
much more friendly than the Lisa workshop. Have you tried
diff, grep, or make / shell files on the workshop? UNIX also is
more friendly than many of the Mac standalone C development environments.
There may be a difference between user-friendly and programmer-friendly.
As far as costs go, I was refering to 'incremental' costs for
someone who already has access to UNIX and a Mac. I was not encouraging
timesharing systems by any means. Some people are using SUMacC on
SUN, Metheus, etc. workstations.