For a while after IBM introduced VM in the early '70s, some people advocated "straight through" coding which kind of tied into Structured Programming. The idea was to start the program on page 1 of the listing and continue straight through to the last page without going backward or jumping ahead.
This was supposed to make it easier to follow the logic and cut down on OS Page Faults. Some of the maintenance was mitigated by the use of Macros and Includes that inserted the same code over and over. The macros could perform string substitution if it was needed. A lot of very strange things happened during those years in an attempt to advance the state of the art. What is really interesting is that a lot of the stuff from that period is being trotted out again under different names: XML, Pentium architecture, DLLs, Common runtime, etc. Unfortunately a lot of the bad stuff keeps coming back. Hope springs eternal, I guess. HALinNY -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mark Stanton Sent: Friday, June 16, 2006 19:44 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [NF] Vista architecture I s'pose I am too really, in a "oh no, not again" kind of way. It's interesting that you say > Mainframe OS (in the dark ages) were concerned with conservation of > resources. > Actually, all programming was concerned with conservation of > resources, because most of the (admittedly little) mainframe *programs* I saw seemed to be an *incredible* waste of programming resources. The thing that caught my eye most being the lack of subroutines (ie "libraries" I s'pose) and hence identical sections of code dropped into multiple places, a maintenance nightmare. Watching ex-mainframe developers replicate that on PC's was a truly frightening experience. The progress of the PC seems to have avoided that particular tank- trap, but has gone towards incredible bloat (I know, no-one is surprised) due to the availability of resources, as you(s) say. Nice that it's a different problem I s'pose... Mark Stanton One small step for mankind... _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
