By the time frame mentioned in the article (1981) there were many
commercially available applications. There was also hardware (e.g. from
DEC, DG, HP) that was of a scale where it would be dedicated to one
application. At that time I worked for a company that developed a
database system. I can think of a few trips I made to help customers
bring up a new data center dedicated to running our product.
On 4/27/24 14:12, Wayne S via cctalk wrote:
IMHO, having started programming in 1977, the thing that drove sales was the
promise of reduced costs just by having a computer that could be programmed to
do accounting type work that would eliminate jobs and thus costs. Mainframes
were very expensive back then so there weren’t many companies that developed
software just to be marketed to other companies. A lot if what was sold had
been developed by a company for internal use. Tgen someone got the idea that
they could recoup some development costs by selling the software. A lot of
payroll systems got started like that. Payroll was a logical starting point
because it was a common function within companies.
I would say that software never drove hardware sales. You had hardware already
and you might try to find software that ran on it or your team programmed it in
house. I’ve never been to a company that found software then bought the
hardware that it ran on. There would be too much due diligence needed to make
that happen.
Sent from my iPhone
On Apr 27, 2024, at 10:41, Tarek Hoteit <ta...@infocom.ai> wrote:
Hi. Meant complete software application systems, but, of course, it is
eventually powered by language compilers
Regards,
Tarek Hoteit
AI Consultant, PhD
+1 360-838-3675
On Apr 27, 2024, at 10:39, Wayne S <wayne.su...@hotmail.com> wrote:
When you say “software drove hardware sales” do you mean complete software
application systems or do you mean compilers available for the hardware so the
software teams had variety in what they could program?
Up to the ‘90’s, companies had big, expensive hardware and little to no canned
software applications so companies also had relatively cheaper software
developers to make custom programs.
Sent from my iPhone
On Apr 27, 2024, at 10:23, Tarek Hoteit via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org>
wrote:
I came across this paragraph from the July 1981 Popular Science magazine
edition in the article titled “Compute power - pro models at almost home-unit
prices.”
“ ‘Personal-computer buffs may buy a machine, bring it home, and then spend the
rest of their time looking for things it can do’, said …. ‘In business, it’s
the other way around. Here you know the job, you have to find a machine that
will do it. More precisely, you have to find software that will do the job.
Finding a computer to use the software you’ve selected becomes secondary.”.
Do you guys* think that software drove hardware sales rather than the other way
around for businesses in the early days? I recall that computer hardware
salespeople would be knocking on businesses office doors rather than software
salesmen. Just seeking your opinion now that we are far ahead from 1981.
(*I do wish we have female gender engaged in the classic computing discussions
threads as well. Maybe there is.)
Regards,
Tarek Hoteit
AI Consultant, PhD
+1 360-838-3675
