That mainframe software was also worth exacly what IBM charged for
it...NOTHING!
I remember in the late 60's working on a rather large (for the time)
Cobol program -- a syntax Parser for Fortran IV.
I developed and tested the code using a dial-up remote (10cps Teletype)
to a time-shared *Burroughs* B6500 mainframe (built in the mid-50's).
The program took about 4 minutes to compile on that time-shared machine.
Once finished, I had to port the program to IBM360. I rented IBM360/50s
for overnight sessions...I'd mount the DOS, feed the 4 boxes of cards in
and then wait for over 20 minutes for the damn thing to compile.
The *Burroughs* machine HAD NO ASSEMBLER LANGUAGE. The engineers
designed it to execute ALGOL -- a 3rd gen language similar to Pascal,
etc. The time-share OS, Cobol Compiler, etc. for the Borroughs were all
written in ALGOL -- NOT ASSEMBLER.
IBM, on the other hand, had teams of 100's of programmers writing the
clunky, innefficient OS that their machines were saddled with. IBM's
OS/mainframe combinations didn't catch up to the processing efficiency
of the 1950's vintage Bourroughs until the 4300 series in the early
1980's -- but even then the IBM's were still crippled by that DAMNED,
IMPENETRABLE, EXCREBLE OS JCL (Job Control Language)!!!!
Just a little history for you youngsters...
C
Andy Davies wrote:
Jeff Fisher said "Before the PC, there was the mini/mainframe where people
paid
a LOT of money for software."
latterly, yes; but in the sixties/ early seventies you paid for the
hardware and the OS and even application software was thrown in for free.
IBM even supplied people called iirc 'systems engineers' to help you set it
up.
Andrew Davies MBCS CITP
- AndyD 8-)#
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