Re: First Impressions on Using Alphora's Dataphor

I had to step away from the keyboard, so I'm continuing my response now.

"Christopher Browne" <cbbrowne_at_acm.org> wrote in message news:2pkepaFls80gU1_at_uni-berlin.de...

> - Linux is a Unix derivative, and therefore not genuinely
> new;

It's an evolution. Unix itself was an evolution from Multics.
>
> - Windows isn't particularly useful, so being new isn't helpful ;-);

Windows IS useful. It's easy to learn. (not the same thing a s easy to use, but that's a whole other discussion).

Windows got its look and feel from the Macintosh. And the Mac got its look and feel from the "office of the future" that was built at the Palo Alto Research Center of Xerox corp. Again, it's an evolution.

>
> - XML is merely a rehashing of S-exprs, which date back to the '60s;

Dunno about this one, so I'll pass.
>
> - Java and C# are merely additional iterations in the retreads of BCPL
> and Algol :-)

Well, not really. Algol was actually a "tighter" language than C. When I left Algol, I went with Pascal.

Then again, I thought Betamax was better than VHS.
>
> - Most of the innovation in "relational stuff" ended when Stonebraker
> left academia.

>
> You could do far worse than to rummage around the papers of the '70s
> to look for mine them for things people have forgotten... Nobody in
> IT 'management' would be likely to notice that you were creating
> 'retreads' of old technologies.

I'm doing a little of that kind of work myself. I like to think of it as more a "consolidation" of several old ideas than a simple "retread". But maybe I'm exaggerating my own importance. Received on Wed Sep 01 2004 - 02:38:16 CEST