2 ms·

Mechanisms equivalent with the overlapped I/O of Windows NT (1993) already existed 30 years earlier, e.g. in IBM OS/360 and PL/I (1964/1965). The main features

Mechanisms equivalent with the overlapped I/O of Windows NT (1993) already existed 30 years earlier, e.g. in IBM OS/360 and PL/I (1964/1965). The main features that were better in Windows NT than in the UNIX-derived operating systems were inherited from the DEC VAX/VMS operating system (1978) (e.g. WaitForMultipleObjects) and a part of them had been inherited from the even earlier operating system DEC RSX-11M (1974-11) (Dave Cutler also had a major role in those operating systems, so there is nothing surprising about this; Microsoft had to pay a big compensation to DEC, on the order of $ 100M, for the features that were obviously taken from the DEC operating systems). UNIX was very simplified in comparison with the operating systems that were used on bigger computers, and for some things its derivatives never caught up with those older systems, except after 2000. Only "futex" (2002) and "io_uring" (2019) have advanced the state of the art clearly beyond what already existed for AIO on the IBM mainframes around 1964/1966.

jchw 3mo ago
To be fair, I think that was the entire challenge in the first place: the contemporary microcomputers were relatively limited on what they could do, so you couldn't necessarily afford to just do everything mainframes were doing. More importantly, it's not clear you would've wanted to. Having the taste and good sense to know what to "steal" and how to "steal" it was already hard enough work. A lot of good ideas took a while to come over, but a lot of probably bad ideas also never did. It's an evergreen interesting fact that Dave Cutler took perhaps a bit too much inspiration from prior VMS work to NT, but I also think there's no need to put an asterisk on it anymore than there is UNIX or anything else; it does ultimately stand on its own. Like great artists, great software architects steal.
pjmlp 3mo ago
Including the use of systems programming languages with bounds checking, PL/I, PL.8, PL/S, NEWP, ...
celiacFun 3mo ago
I’m not sure you can call anything in Linux/Unix as equivalent to overlapped I/O in Windows given that there aren’t any IRPs

jchw 3mo ago

To be fair, I think that was the entire challenge in the first place: the contemporary microcomputers were relatively limited on what they could do, so you couldn't necessarily afford to just do everything mainframes were doing. More importantly, it's not clear you would've wanted to. Having the taste and good sense to know what to "steal" and how to "steal" it was already hard enough work. A lot of good ideas took a while to come over, but a lot of probably bad ideas also never did. It's an evergreen interesting fact that Dave Cutler took perhaps a bit too much inspiration from prior VMS work to NT, but I also think there's no need to put an asterisk on it anymore than there is UNIX or anything else; it does ultimately stand on its own. Like great artists, great software architects steal.

pjmlp 3mo ago

Including the use of systems programming languages with bounds checking, PL/I, PL.8, PL/S, NEWP, ...

celiacFun 3mo ago

I’m not sure you can call anything in Linux/Unix as equivalent to overlapped I/O in Windows given that there aren’t any IRPs