As a discussion point, and in retrospect, what mistakes did the computer industry make over the last few decades?

SunOS moving from BSD to SYS V?

SunOS stopped including the C compiler with the OS?

Bill Joy should've stopped with vi and never have started oak?

Sun Microsystems should have sent their lawyers after the kid that made and OS by copying their kernel interface details out of a book?

Microsoft should have include a fully legit BASH shell in the base OS by at least NT 4.0?

The original PC BIOS should have fully supported administrative function over a serial console?

Variant symlinks should be everywhere?

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Re: In retrospect, mistakes the computer industry made.
By: Binary Ninja to All on Sat Jun 27 2015 10:04 am

As a discussion point, and in retrospect, what mistakes did the computer industry make over the last few decades?

SunOS moving from BSD to SYS V?

Microsoft should have include a fully legit BASH shell in the base OS by at least NT 4.0?

The original PC BIOS should have fully supported administrative function over a serial console?

I'd add OS vendors released their SDKs for free. It seemed like OS/2 lost where Windows won because developing for OS/2 cost quite a bit more.

I want to go to this world where I could have a SunOS laptop running SunWindows with broad application support.

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Re: In retrospect, mistakes the computer industry made.
By: Poindexter Fortran to Binary Ninja on Sun Jun 28 2015 08:02:16

I'd add OS vendors released their SDKs for free. It seemed like OS/2 lost where Windows won because developing for OS/2 cost quite a bit more.

I'd agree, charging for SDKs is a bad idea when SDKs for other OSes are free. However, I seem to remember software development tools being fairly expensive, even for DOS/Windows. I believe one of the reasons Borland C++ was so popular in the early 90s was because it was so much cheaper to buy than competing development tools.

These days, it seems that the cost of software development might be less relevant than it used to be. For instance, although Apple's iOS SDK is free, the cost to develop for Apple's iOS is more expensive than developing for Android - You have to buy a Mac (the iOS development software, XCode, only runs on Mac OS X), then you have to pay an annual fee to have apps distributed in their App Store ($99 or $299 per year, depending on your organization). Despite those costs, iOS devices are still successful, with many people buying them and many developers writing apps for them.
On the flip side, there are a lot more Android devices on the market (which is true), and it's true that Google provides their Android development software free for Windows, Linux, and Mac (making it much easier for anyone to develop Android apps). Those things definitely have proven to benefit Android, but Apple's model seems to be working for them too.

Nightfox

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Re: In retrospect, mistakes the computer industry made.
By: Nightfox to Poindexter Fortran on Sun Jun 28 2015 09:21 am

I'd agree, charging for SDKs is a bad idea when SDKs for other OSes are free. However, I seem to remember software development tools being fairly expensive, even for DOS/Windows. I believe one of the reasons Borland C++ was so popular in the early 90s was because it was so much cheaper to buy than competing development tools.

I studied computer science back in the late '80s and early '90s, and remember having to choose between MSC (expensive, not integrated, seemingly meant for professional coders, and Microsoft Quick C/Borland Turbo C. Both were nice IDEs, first of their time. For some reason, I chose Quick C, it fell by the wayside shortly thereafter.

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Re: In retrospect, mistakes the computer industry made.
By: Poindexter Fortran to Binary Ninja on Sun Jun 28 2015 08:02 am

The original PC BIOS should have fully supported administrative
function over a serial console?

I'd add OS vendors released their SDKs for free. It seemed like OS/2
lost where Windows won because developing for OS/2 cost quite a bit
more.

I want to go to this world where I could have a SunOS laptop running SunWindows with broad application support.

I somehow managed to exit the editor before I was finished adding content to that message. I was also going to add that IMO it was bad when Sun stopped shipping the C compiler with the base OS. (Early on, building drivers into the kernel required a compile step. Once the provided an altername mechanism for that, they no longer needed to ship the compiler.)

[BN]

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Re: In retrospect, mistakes the computer industry made.
By: Binary Ninja to Poindexter Fortran on Mon Jun 29 2015 09:18 am

to that message. I was also going to add that IMO it was bad when Sun stopped shipping the C compiler with the base OS. (Early on, building drivers into the kernel required a compile step. Once the provided an altername mechanism for that, they no longer needed to ship the compiler.)

I didn't think it was that bad, at least in the Solaris world. There were package repositories where I'd add a C compiler, procmail, PINE, and a POP server, then take it from there.

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Re: In retrospect, mistakes the computer industry made.
By: Poindexter Fortran to Binary Ninja on Mon Jun 29 2015 11:02 pm

to that message. I was also going to add that IMO it was bad when
Sun stopped shipping the C compiler with the base OS. (Early on,
building drivers into the kernel required a compile step. Once they
provided an altername mechanism for that, they no longer needed to
ship the compiler.)

I didn't think it was that bad, at least in the Solaris world. There
were package repositories where I'd add a C compiler, procmail, PINE,
and a POP server, then take it from there.

That may be partially the difference in SunOS and Solaris. SunOS being <4.13 and Solaris being the stuff that came later.

[BN]

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Re: In retrospect, mistakes the computer industry made.
By: Binary Ninja to Poindexter Fortran on Wed Jul 01 2015 05:49 pm

That may be partially the difference in SunOS and Solaris. SunOS being <4.13 and Solaris being the stuff that came later.

I started out with a Sparcstation 20 and a Sparc 2 running Solaris 2.3. Missed the SunOS world, always wanted a Sun 3 series box...

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