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I spent about 7-8 years developing on OS/2. It lent itself to being tinkered and tailored in a much more developer-friendly way than most OSes. The rexx script

by kitd 7y ago

I spent about 7-8 years developing on OS/2. It lent itself to being tinkered and tailored in a much more developer-friendly way than most OSes. The rexx scripting was pervasive. There were meaningful file object attributes that could be extended and used per app. The SOM model was a bit clunky but very powerful (I went on to work with its designer later in my career). It had a bunch of powerful compilers that left all the Windows competitors for dust. And of course it looked great for a windowed GUI at the time.

guessbest 7y ago
When did you develop for it? I remember 89 to 95 being the heyday of OS/2, when if you wanted to get your Windows 3.1 machine on the network, you pretty much had to use OS/2 or Novell to host the network.
- kitd 7y ago
  This was approx 1990-1998. I was working for an actuarial partnership. Our software generated customer-specific actuarial FORTRAN code, with the generator and UI in C. We used the Watcom compilers for both ends of the pipeline. They were top class, and still available AIUI.
sdegutis 7y ago
Scripting and generic IPC hooks are one of the coolest things computers can do, and they're more and more limited as time goes on. Just this morning I tried writing a Dark Mode menu bar app for OSX (I'm aware of NightOwl) and it's literally 5 lines of code, but I can't get it running because of sandbox headaches. Looked up all the combinations of solutions but couldn't figure it out after 30 minutes. All sorts of automation and inter-app use-cases are basically dead. All in the name of greater security, except that it can still be done with a good security model. It's possible, it's just that that's not anybody's use-case for computers anymore, except for power users who know how to use Linux, so it's been downgraded to "unsupported". (And Linux is just generally not compatible with rMBP hardware afaik.) Reading what you said about OS/2 sounds like it was a lot closer to this ideal.
peatmoss 7y ago
Rexx scripting was great! And it definitely felt like they were catering the OS to a powerful group of power users. To clarify my statement above about its code being a hot mess: my understanding was always that OS/2 achieved reliability through sheer force of will rather than it being built in a way that was architected to be intrinsically safe. Sort of how US nuclear subs have achieved an impressive safety record mainly due to extraordinary fastidiousness with respect to process and procedure.

by kitd 7y ago

guessbest 7y ago

When did you develop for it? I remember 89 to 95 being the heyday of OS/2, when if you wanted to get your Windows 3.1 machine on the network, you pretty much had to use OS/2 or Novell to host the network.

kitd 7y ago
This was approx 1990-1998. I was working for an actuarial partnership. Our software generated customer-specific actuarial FORTRAN code, with the generator and UI in C. We used the Watcom compilers for both ends of the pipeline. They were top class, and still available AIUI.

sdegutis 7y ago

Scripting and generic IPC hooks are one of the coolest things computers can do, and they're more and more limited as time goes on. Just this morning I tried writing a Dark Mode menu bar app for OSX (I'm aware of NightOwl) and it's literally 5 lines of code, but I can't get it running because of sandbox headaches. Looked up all the combinations of solutions but couldn't figure it out after 30 minutes. All sorts of automation and inter-app use-cases are basically dead. All in the name of greater security, except that it can still be done with a good security model. It's possible, it's just that that's not anybody's use-case for computers anymore, except for power users who know how to use Linux, so it's been downgraded to "unsupported". (And Linux is just generally not compatible with rMBP hardware afaik.) Reading what you said about OS/2 sounds like it was a lot closer to this ideal.

peatmoss 7y ago

Rexx scripting was great! And it definitely felt like they were catering the OS to a powerful group of power users. To clarify my statement above about its code being a hot mess: my understanding was always that OS/2 achieved reliability through sheer force of will rather than it being built in a way that was architected to be intrinsically safe. Sort of how US nuclear subs have achieved an impressive safety record mainly due to extraordinary fastidiousness with respect to process and procedure.