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Path: ...!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Tim Rentsch <tr.17687@z991.linuxsc.com> Newsgroups: comp.arch Subject: Re: The Design of Design Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2024 16:04:10 -0700 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 55 Message-ID: <868r0xum1h.fsf@linuxsc.com> References: <v03uh5$gbd5$1@dont-email.me> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Injection-Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2024 01:04:13 +0200 (CEST) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="c36476fd6bd91582cb5d0726d3f1692e"; logging-data="1387021"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX18Gu/fjCfAFFc66K0RXsJe3MjkpamsWEag=" User-Agent: Gnus/5.11 (Gnus v5.11) Emacs/22.4 (gnu/linux) Cancel-Lock: sha1:JXi1y/he7xV52ZNuoGV98TWMHsA= sha1:gEoJeZryhObu9DmJyil5jd/kgh4= Bytes: 3585 Thomas Koenig <tkoenig@netcologne.de> writes: > I've just read (most of) "The Design of Design" by Fred Brooks, > especially the chapters dealing with the design of the /360, > and it's certainly worth reading. (I had finished "The Mythical > Man-Month" before). There are chapters on computer and software > architectures, but also something on a house he himself built. That he designed (with the help of a professional architect). It may be that Brooks and his family helped with some of the interior work, but professional contractors did the building. > An interesting detail about the /360 design was that they originally > wanted to do a stack-based machine. It would have been OK for the > mid- and high-end machines, but on low-end machines it would have > been undompetetive, so they rejected that approach. And it was a serious consideration, the team spending six months before rejecting it due to those performance limitations. > He discusses the book on computer architecture he co-authored with > Gerrit Blaauw in it (as a project). Would be _very_ nice to read, > but the price on Amazon is somewhat steep, a bit more than 150 Euros. Yow. I think I'll try a local library. > One thing about Brooks - he is not shy of criticizing his own > works when his views changed. I liked his scathing comments on JCL > so much that I put them in the Wikipedia article :-) Personally I think his assessment of JCL is harsher than it deserves. Don't get me wrong, JCL is not my idea of a great control language, but it was usable enough in the environment that customers were used to. The biggest fault of JCL is that it is trying to solve the wrong problem. It isn't clear that trying to do something more ambitious would have fared any better in the early 1960s (see also The Second System Effect in MMM). No comment about JCL still being used today. > His main criticism of his own book on computer architecture was > that it treated computer architecture as a finite field which had > been explored already. > > @John S: Not sure if you've read "The Design of Design", but if you > haven't, you probably should. It might help you to refocus in your > quest to recreate a S/360 (especially the requirement to get the > architecture to work well on a very small machine like the 360/30). > > Soo... good to read. Anything else? I read TDOD somewhat quickly completely through. After a time I went back and started re-reading, going more slowly the second time. That has turned out to be rather useful, and I would at least suggest that people try a second, and slower, reading.