4 ms·

I like the first 2 footnotes from the post: 1. This point is worth drawing attention to; the abstraction of the machine's ISA was so effective in the case of t

I like the first 2 footnotes from the post: 1. This point is worth drawing attention to; the abstraction of the machine's ISA was so effective in the case of the AS/400 that IBM never even documented the CPU's ISA, nor did they need to. Supposedly, the ISA was System 360-like. 2. The fact that AS/400 and its predecessor System/38 significantly predate Java demonstrates that there really is no “new” idea in computer science that IBM wasn't doing in the 70s, an observation I've become fond of. The explosion of “virtualisation” in IT in the 2000s/2010s is another example; to my knowledge, hardware virtualisation was first invented by IBM in the System 370.

KerrAvon 4y ago
The predecessor to Java was really the UCSD P-system, which was probably contemporary with the System/38.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  Burroughs was already doing such ideas in 1961.
KerrAvon 4y ago
IIRC System/38 was the one product to actually ship that was based on concepts from IBM’s FS effort. FS was an attempt to produce a fully virtualized — at every layer — System/370 successor in the mid to late 70’s; it failed.
vmcms 4y ago
Having cut my teeth on VM/CMS, I really appreciate the crystallized wisdom in "there really is no 'new' idea in computer science that IBM wasn't doing in the 70s" - though I'd simplify it to "there really is no 'new' idea in computer science that wasn't implemented in the 70s." Not every innovation happened at IBM first back in those days, any more than they happened at Microsoft first in the '90s, even if IBM (and Microsoft) were more successful at capitalizing on the innovations of others due to the advantage of being well-capitalized second movers.
pjmlp 4y ago
Burroughs did it first, in what concerns Java like systems, in 1961. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_large_systems https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_large_systems

KerrAvon 4y ago

The predecessor to Java was really the UCSD P-system, which was probably contemporary with the System/38.

pjmlp 4y ago
Burroughs was already doing such ideas in 1961.

KerrAvon 4y ago

IIRC System/38 was the one product to actually ship that was based on concepts from IBM’s FS effort. FS was an attempt to produce a fully virtualized — at every layer — System/370 successor in the mid to late 70’s; it failed.

vmcms 4y ago

Having cut my teeth on VM/CMS, I really appreciate the crystallized wisdom in "there really is no 'new' idea in computer science that IBM wasn't doing in the 70s" - though I'd simplify it to "there really is no 'new' idea in computer science that wasn't implemented in the 70s." Not every innovation happened at IBM first back in those days, any more than they happened at Microsoft first in the '90s, even if IBM (and Microsoft) were more successful at capitalizing on the innovations of others due to the advantage of being well-capitalized second movers.

pjmlp 4y ago

Burroughs did it first, in what concerns Java like systems, in 1961. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_large_systems https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burroughs_large_systems