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C00002 00002	histor[e84,jmc]		Opinions on the history of computing
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histor[e84,jmc]		Opinions on the history of computing

hacking:	The incremental development of a computer program or other
		object.  One starts by building the part one understands
		or immediately wants, and builds more with this as a base.
It has its limitations compared with a top down design starting with a
theoretical understanding of the function of the object and its possibilities.
It works better with computer programs than with anything else.  Building
an airplane this way wouldn't work.  One story buildings can be hacked, i.e.
one begins with some rooms and adds on, but multi-story buildings cannot.
Complexes of buildings, e.g. Stanford University, start with a planned
structure and then are hacked.

	What von Neumann thought he had to do to justify a computer.

	IBM 701, 704, 709, 7090, Stretch, 702, 705, 650, 610, 795, 7100,
360, 370, pc.  It is especially interesting to consider the computers
that not even IBM could sell - to account for the errors.

pdp1,pdp3,pdp4,6,10,2060,7,9,15,16,vax.

besm and other Soviet computers.

360 good things, combine commercial and scientific on binary
mistakes, half-duplex, no relocate, 24bit, displacement

generic mistakes, short address,

bad ideas, directly executable higher order language, decimal, firmware
paging and segmentation,

nonsense about generation

Well, if all this is true, what current ventures are likely to succeed
and fail.

Good and bad ideas in programming languages and programming generally.

The importance of hand holding.

Putting the thesis in hardware.

Cray's successs.

The vices of engineers, the vices of business men, the vices of computer
scientists.