Newsgroups: comp.parallel.pvm
From: wolff@inf.fu-berlin.de (Thomas Wolff)
Subject: Re: PVM under Windows?
Organization: Free University of Berlin, Germany
Date: Tue, 23 Aug 1994 18:10:34 GMT
Message-ID: <B8URBSZN@math.fu-berlin.de>

BAD305@UKCC.UKY.EDU (Bill Paterson) writes:

: >>> Notwithstanding any proprietary secrets, why would you want to
:     to run PVM under Windows?  I assume that the job would be running
:      without any other users over your network?  Windows is not an
:      operating system.

I won't argue that Windows is wide-spread, people use it, lots of 
developments have been made for it, and all that, since on the same 
grounds I would also have to accept the single-letter junk language 
as a usable programming language - which I don't.
But I'd like you to take a somewhat more relative view. For years 
during my studies, I used to blame BS2000 (a mainframe operating system) 
for being slow, user-unfriendly, unflexible in setting up command jobs, 
etc. When I became familiar with Unix, I really had to reduce my 
anger. Unix is flexible, yes, that's it. It is extremely user-unfriendly, 
poorly documented, error-prone, leaving you alone with errors, 
errors are fostered over years for sake of "compatibility" instead 
of removing them, it is unsafe in many respects. Widespread add-ons, 
like X-Windows, are gigantic and slow. Almost worst of all, Unix is 
basically responsible for the persistent plague of the meanest 
programming language ever.
Be cautious with your judging!
Windows may well be called a toy system if you wish.
Unix is definately a hackers' system.
The best system I've seen (Apollo Domain/OS) is dying out.
VMS (which I don't know much about) is dying out.
What else do we have?

A nerved systems user
Thomas Wolff@inf.fu-berlin.de

