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From: Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: IBM, sonic delay lines, and the history of the 80x24 display
Date: Wed, 1 May 2024 01:16:18 -0000 (UTC)
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On Tue, 30 Apr 2024 20:52:29 -0400, Dan Espen wrote:

> It sure looked like IBM refused to release simple solutions because they
> were afraid the competition could produce something compatible.

I think Hanlon’s Razor applies: “never attribute to malevolence that which 
can be explained by stupidity”.

In other words, the complexity comes from Conway’s Law: “any piece of 
software reflects the organizational structure that produced it”. Or in 
more general form, “any engineering endeavour reflects the organizational 
structure that produced it” (including both software and hardware). So the 
complexity and inflexibility in IBM’s products comes directly from the 
labyrinth that was its internal corporate culture.

> The S32/S34 line had a nice design until they decided to make it
> complicated with the S/38 AS/400 stuff.

System/38 was the first (only?) commercial product that implemented 
capabilities and also built a database into the OS.