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Computer Design magazine's August 1983 issue had these articles: - C Language: Key to portability - Apple Lisa's revolutionary user interface - MS-DOS 2.0 br
by sedatk 4y ago
Computer Design magazine's August 1983 issue had these articles:
- C Language: Key to portability
- Apple Lisa's revolutionary user interface
- MS-DOS 2.0 brings Unix-like features
- ArpaNet can be a game changer
The editors had managed to cramp what would shape the next four decades of computing in a single issue.
- tragomaskhalos 4y ago"ArpaNet can be a game changer" must be a serious contender for understatement of the century
- sedatk 4y agoI looked into the mag now, and the actual quote was even a greater understatement: "[ArpaNet] is not only operational, but growing. In time, it may shift from its defense-related role into more commercial areas."
- hota_mazi 4y agoThe magazine(s) made similar statement about every single new technology it came across. Pascal, CP/M, OS/2, Logo, Smalltalk, etc... That was its shtick. Of course some of these predictions were going to turn out to be true.
- richard_todd 4y agoI had to check that out; found it here: https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_computerDe_143117685/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_computerDe_143117685/m... (note: the articles sedatk mentioned didn't seem to be in the table of contents, but on PDF page 113 there is a "special report" section where I've found some of them)
- sedatk 4y agoYeah IIRC most articles were the part of "Microsystems Software" report.
- shadowofneptune 4y agoThe difference between MS-DOS 1.0 and 2.0 is rather shocking. It feels like that's the moment it really becomes DOS, instead of a variant of CP/M.
- ncmncm 4y agoLiterally the only thing DOS needed to do was start up a program. Differences between 1 and 2, or any of them, are marginal. That is why windos didn't need to be any good: all it needed was to move the mouse pointer and let you click on a program icon.
- shadowofneptune 4y agoDifferences between the versions: - Big difference in philosophy. CP/M is record-based, you work with big tables describing files. Dos 2.0 prefers streams, and it has much more lightweight, Unix-like file handles. - Another Unix feature adopted is device files. There was no line printer or console file in DOS 1.0, if you wanted to do something unique with I/O you had to write a program for it. That along with pipes makes 2.0 much more nice to work with even 40 years later. - Hierarchical directories and hard drives. The two go together, and the advantages should be obvious. - Memory management. Dos 2.0 is the first to have equivalents of malloc, free, and realloc in its syscalls. This makes having Terminate and Stay Resident (TSR) programs much more feasible. The PRINT command is an example, it can run in the background.
- ncmncm 4y agoSerious programmers bypassed almost all of that. The hierarchical files became important after people got what they called "hard drives".
- shadowofneptune 4y agoQuestion: bypassing graphics routines is very common to read, but how often was file I/O bypassed? I have never heard anything like that.