Tech: Mark Clark: NCR390 Computer

Subject: Tech: Mark Clark: NCR390 Computer
From: GUEST,Dave Morton
Date: 29 Jul 04 - 02:26 AM

Mark -

Saw your post where you mentioned the NCR390 computer.
I have old pix, a simulator, and a compiler(!) for the old tan machine. If you're interested, send me an email at:
marspyrs at aol.com...

Dave



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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows XP
From: Mark Clark
Date: 27 Oct 03 - 06:42 PM

Don, A Kaypro II? Cool. The Kaypro was a knockoff of the Osborne I and I still have mine. Of course it hasn't been powered up in many years. The computing history exhibit at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry has an Osborne I along with a number of older computers I've used. The first computer I ever became adept on was an NCR 390; no disk drive, no operating system, no compiler or assembler, just real instructions on the bare hardware. It had actual core memory (one tiny ferrite donut per bit) and a 2nd generation CPU based on transistors.

Fionn, In helping to solve computer problems, I find it's often helpful to have many people propose solutions, even the same solutions explained in a different way. You never know which explanation is going to connect with the user's experience.

- Mark

Subject: RE: Tech: Mark Clark: NCR390 Computer
From: Dave Bryant
Date: 29 Jul 04 - 09:32 AM

The first computer that I did any serious programming on was an IBM 1401. The memory was 16k - 8-bit characters - 6 data bits, 1 word mark bit, and 1 parity bit - on magnetic cores. There were tape drives, a card reader/punch (80 col), and a 600 lpm printer. There was a disk unit avalable (1405 RAMAC) which had fixed multiple disks, but only one read/write head which could slide up and down (as well is in and out) to select different disk platters.

One became very adept at shoe-horning quite large programs into the tiny memory and the instruction set contained feature like instruction "chaining" which helped save space. It seems quite incredible how complex many of the programs could be within these restrictions.

I wonder what people of those days, would make of my PDA which has 320 mb available !

Subject: RE: Tech: Mark Clark: NCR390 Computer
From: Mary in Kentucky
Date: 29 Jul 04 - 10:10 AM

Dave, I'm curious...I know that technology and new methods have made critical thinking in math very sloppy...but has this "unlimited" memory made programming sloppy? I've also noticed that students (and myself too) find it faster to just try several things quickly instead of reasoning out a problem. I wonder about the end product of this type of thinking. The carryover into philosophy is scary.

We are probably of a generation that remembers and appreciates how to use our minds pre-computer times. (I remember using cards.) I wonder about this new generation.

When personal computers were new, there were a lot of predictions about using their power for math self-discovery-type programs. (What was the little turtle's name?) Then computers were taken over by business departments -- word processing, spread sheets, even email. I wonder...

In the early days I expressed one of my fears about writing to a computer teacher. She dismissed my questions as irrelevant. (I had noticed that people thought and wrote differently when they could cut and paste -- the thinking was more fractured.) Was I right? Or has the new generation learned to think deeply and wholistically using a word processor and typing? (Like I'm doing now -- notice my fractured, train-of-thought ideas? ;-))

Subject: RE: Tech: Mark Clark: NCR390 Computer
From: Mark Clark
Date: 29 Jul 04 - 01:47 PM

Mary, I know your questions were for Dave but I'm going to throw in my thoughts anyway.

Whether or not programming has been made sloppy depends on the project and reason for creating the program. If you're talking about programs written by business IT departments aimed at providing management solutions then, yes, programming has become very sloppy indeed. I find that most programmers in an IT department aren't really comfortable with the principles and practices of computer science. They'd rather learn the arcane nuances of some proprietary tool that promises to generate programs for them than to spend the same effort learning to develop high-quality programs directly. As a result, their programs are sloppy, bloated, slow and generally constrained to run in the specific environment in which they were created, usually with the support of an expensive and proprietary interpreter.

Still, a great many high-quality programs are still being written. Often these are embeded software applications where size, performance and reliability are still important. Oddly, some of the most carefully written and high quality software available is the “free” software available under the GNU Public Licence. The whole world has access to the code for these programs so peer pressure causes the code to be carefully designed and well written from the start. It also has the advantage of peer review by interested parties the world over. Everyone with an idea or improvement has the opportunity to submit changes to the controling team so that the very best ideas and practices are incorporated.

For someone schooled in computer science and to whom quality is an important concept, a corporate IT department can be a very depressing place to work. The first concern of corporations is usually schedule—determined prior to any knowledge of technical requirements—followed closely by cost. If the IT department has any processes to ensure quality—a rarity—the requirements of quality are so far down the priority list as to be almost missing. To corporate executives, what they see on a screen is the program. If you show them a mock-up of of the screen in the design stage, they will think the softare is nearly finished.

Making good programs is in many ways like making good music. It's a very satisfying and mind-expanding experience but nobody is really going to pay you to do it. It's the schlock product concieved by marketing people and hastily thrown together that makes real money, both in software and in music. Quality software and quality music are each done more for the love of it than anything else. There are other examples of course but research has shown that aptitude for software and music is closely related so I like to use them as examples.

The acceptance of the personal computer by the corporate world has been a mixed blessing. On the one hand, it's made cheap, powerful computers available to almost everyone—a huge benefit. On the other hand, the software industry that has grown up around personal computers is focused almost entirely on serving corporate needs in the hope of hitting the software lotto and becoming the next big thing. It's odd but if you sell a software product to a few select corporations for half a million a pop, customer expectations aren't too high and you have IT professionals calling your help desk. If you sell a software product for $39.95 to a couple of million consumers, they each think they own you and the people consuming your help desk budget can't even spell computer.

One of the early software innovations—right after the word processor and the electronic spreadsheet—was something you don't see much anymore called an outline processor. This was sort of a spreadsheet program for turning ideas into well-crafted documents. You could enter your thoughts in a random or stream-of-consciousness fashion and the the program would let you drag ideas around, flesh out ideas as inspiration manifested itself, compress and expand whole sections and keep your focus on the whole document until it was complete. I loved those programs.

I think email has enhanced the quality of communications, even when the message is full of misspellings, grammatical errors and strange abbreviations. In a telephone conversation, we often do a double-take after hanging up the phone. “Did she really mean... ?” “ Doh! I forgot to say...” We tend to shoot from the hip and may not say what we mean at all. With email, however, we can read our messages over and over making sure we've read it correctly and we have time to consider the message in the light of personalities and events. When we compose email, the message is still before us and we have a chance to consider its quality and value before sending it off. I know we don't always do this but at least we have the opportunity.

      - Mark

Subject: RE: Tech: Mark Clark: NCR390 Computer
From: Amos
Date: 29 Jul 04 - 02:14 PM

One of the hardest things to acheive in software is genuine elegance -- by which I mean, the kind of focused coherence that results when your design really does provide what is needed, well analyzed and then applied with good sense; lean enough to be fast, through enough to really cover the use needed, and tightly enough written to be efficient.

A