🚀 go-pugleaf

dstubbs@garden.csc.calpoly.edu (Dan Stubbs) wrote with possible
deletions:
 
|      1   73,453   basic.visual
|      :
|     17    5,412   eiffel

This proves, as does the stock market, that the majority of people are
always wrong.


~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Colin James III, Principal Scientist  cjames@cec-services.com
CEC Services, 2080 Kipling St, Lakewood, CO  80215-1502   USA
Voice: 303.231.9437;  Facsimile: .231.9438;  Data:  .231.9434  
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In article <4at4t0$j5j@garden.csc.calpoly.edu>,
   dstubbs@garden.csc.calpoly.edu (Dan Stubbs) wrote:
>The following table shows the number of posts to the "top 20" groups in
>comp.lang.*. Note that these numbers reflect adding up the posts for
>the various pascal and basic.visual groups. The java group has been moving
>up the list rather rapidly, and is undoubtedly in 11th place by now.

Where's AWK?

----------------
Steve Silberberg
stevebo@onramp.net
http://rampages.onramp.net/~stevebo/

IMHO, simple languages that are easy to learn and formalize do not
generate as much traffic as languages with complex syntax, semantics,
great nuber of rules and exceptions. 

So these numbers can actually indicate not "goodness" or even
"aceptance" of a certain language, but rather its complexity to
beginners.

I think this empirical formula is a close approximation of the number
of posts in comp.lang.* newsgroups: 

Nposts( X ) = obscurity( X ) * popularity( X ).

-- 
   - Igor. (My opinions only) http://www.algebra.com/~ichudov/index.html
   For public PGP key, finger me or send email with Subject "send pgp key"

You know you have achieved perfection in design, not when you have nothing 
more to add, but when you have nothing more to take away.
                          - Antoine de Saint Exupery.

Couple of questions here:

1)  Is Delphi lumped in with Pascal or merely omitted?

2)  You got Clipper but no Foxbase/Foxpro - do we assume it is not so
significant or that it was omitted?

3)  Is there any time frame of reference for the accumulations, or is
it just anything A.D.?  Are we measuring last year's "popularity"
here?  This may be statistically more incorrect than any other error,
omission, or deception you may have published here.

It may be more work, but a count at the end of each month for that
month, which interested parties could then accumulate themselves would
be much morte meaningful.

You could possibly do a current month then an overall total and post
it yourself, if you have access to this sort of info - hardly any more
work, since you probably do the arithmetic already anyway?

(Unless of course you are grinding axes here.)

Anyhow - thanks very much for doing it in the first place - it is
certainly a very interesting and worthwhile post.



There's only 2 kinds of sailors - Wankers & Liars
Regards,  Tom Werry         gpsnav@pacific.net.sg
Have a nice day, and        hello, Mom

In article <4at4t0$j5j@garden.csc.calpoly.edu>, dstubbs@garden.csc.calpoly.edu (Dan Stubbs) says:
<snip>

These numbers don't necessarily represent 'popularity' of a
given language.  It could be that some languages are more
problematic than others, and therefore require more discussion
to resolve these problems.  Also, many posts are nor in fact
related in any way to the language discussed in these groups.

It would be very interesting to see a break down of the type of
post within each language, but I understand this would be a
*great* deal of work.

This information is interesting, as are most stats, but the information
should be taken with a grain of salt.  Thanks for posting it.

	Jim Neil

For that matter, I typically read a significantly large number of
postings like this one that is cross posted and have nothing to do
with the popularity of a language at all - or just involve flame wars
over whose language is best, or who are inappropriately (spammed) across
the newsgroups.
-- 
:s Larry W. Virden                 INET: lvirden@cas.org
:s <URL:http://www.teraform.com/%7Elvirden/> <*>
:s Unless explicitly stated to the contrary, nothing in this posting should 
:s be construed as representing my employer's opinions.

The only discussion I could find regarding FoxPro was in Russian!

news:relcom.comp.dbms.foxpro

Probably no stats on their numbers of queries.

-- 
Alexander Medwedew 
Computer Ventures, Inc. 
compvent@tribeca.ios.com 
http://tribeca.ios.com/~compvent/ 
CADVANCE LITE - Affordable CAD Software
http://tribeca.ios.com/~compvent/cadvlite.html

dstubbs@garden.csc.calpoly.edu (Dan Stubbs) wrote:

>The following table shows the number of posts to the "top 20" groups in
>comp.lang.*.

Can you also post monthly rates for the last year; 
at least of java and C++?

Andre van Delft

Read the list for the best programming language based
on the number of posts for questions, bugs, and problems.

>     1    6,012   rexx
>     2    6,832   cobol
>     3    7,310   forth
>     4    8,758   clipper
>   ----------------------------
>     5   10,388   java
>     6   10,438   postscript
>     7   13,039   fortran
>     8   14,390   asm.x86
>   ----------------------------
>     9   15,132   smalltalk
>    10   15,419   perl
>    11   16,033   ada
>    12   19,758   tcl
>   ----------------------------
>    13   43,430   pascal
>    14   55,148   c
>    15   71,298   c++
>    16   73,453   basic.visual

Hey, I can read statistics too.

David Lyon
Hotwire Business Systems
	

dstubbs@garden.csc.calpoly.edu (Dan Stubbs) wrote:
>The following table shows the number of posts to the "top 20" groups in
>comp.lang.*. Note that these numbers reflect adding up the posts for
>the various pascal and basic.visual groups. The java group has been moving
>up the list rather rapidly, and is undoubtedly in 11th place by now.
>
>     1   73,453   basic.visual

One thought...there are lots of crossposts between the various 
VB subgroups (3rdParty, Database, etc.). Did you take this into 
account when counting posts?

dlyon@ipacific.net.au wrote:

>Read the list for the best programming language based
>on the number of posts for questions, bugs, and problems.

>>     1    6,012   rexx
>>     2    6,832   cobol
>>     . . . . .  etc
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tom Werry wrote back:

Hey WOMBAT - what's your point - that rexx, cobol forth & clipper are
the "better" languages?  

We notice you left out the bottom 4 when you inverted the original
list, probably so you would appear merely frivolous but not totally
insane by promoting eiffel, python, lisp, & scheme as your top
choices.

Is "Dylan" even better, because it has no problems at all posted?
What a quaint logic!

You do of course have a valid point, but your method of illustration
is subtle to the point of subliminity (is that a word?).  You also
assume that ALL posts are negative, which is also a bit silly.

>Hey, I can read statistics too.

You mean when some well-meaning soul goes to the trouble of making a
list he thought you might find interesting and worthwhile, you can
actually read it?   How clever.

You could at least close by thanking the guy.  Btw, does your
scorecard count his article as a minus in the groups he posted to?
------------------------------------
Taking your point more seriously, I think we could judge the value of
any particular language or development tool by how many other people
around the world bothered to say anything about it.  

"If everybody's doing it, there must be something worthwhile in it."

I'm Canadian, in case you want to refer back to me by some pertinent
derogatory native animal reference - spare the Singaporeans around
here further agony - their shoulders are loaded down with too many
chips already.

There's only 2 kinds of sailors - Wankers & Liars
Regards,  Tom Werry         gpsnav@pacific.net.sg
Have a nice day, and        hello, Mom

cjames@melchizedek.cec-services.com (Colin James III (The Rt Rev'd)) wrote:
>dstubbs@garden.csc.calpoly.edu (Dan Stubbs) wrote with possible
>deletions:
> 
>|      1   73,453   basic.visual
>|      :
>|     17    5,412   eiffel
>
>This proves, as does the stock market, that the majority of people are
>always wrong.
>
An even better example would be a similar survey for OS usage.

Rick Lutowski
-- 
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
|  Rick Lutowski       oa@iah.com                   713-332-7281  |
|  Object Access       http://www.iah.com/oa/       713-554-7617  |
| --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- |
|  The source for Programmer's Reusable Libraries (TM)     oa=OO  |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+

dlyon@ipacific.net.au wrote:
>
>Read the list for the best programming language based
>on the number of posts for questions, bugs, and problems.
>
>>     1    6,012   rexx
>>     2    6,832   cobol

This must explain why all the banks use cobol - can't afford mistakes
when it comes to money transaction software!

Rick Lutowski
-- 
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
|  Rick Lutowski       oa@iah.com                   713-332-7281  |
|  Object Access       http://www.iah.com/oa/       713-554-7617  |
| --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- |
|  The source for Programmer's Reusable Libraries (TM)     oa=OO  |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+

In article <4at4t0$j5j@garden.csc.calpoly.edu> dstubbs@garden.csc.calpoly.edu (Dan Stubbs) writes:

   The following table shows the number of posts to the "top 20" groups in
   comp.lang.*. Note that these numbers reflect adding up the posts for
   the various pascal and basic.visual groups.

It puzzles me why you added up the pascal and basic.visual groups but not
the lisp groups.  Eiffel, python, lisp and scheme are all lisp-family
languages (as is dylan, which did not make your list).  Come to think of
it, CLOS is a standard extension of Common Lisp, but you did not include
the comp.lang.clos in the comp.lang.lisp tally, or did you?

If the lisp family languages from your list were added up, your resulting
list would look like:

	1   73,453   basic.visual
	2   71,298   c++
	3   55,148   c
	4   43,430   pascal
       -5-  20,266   lisp-family    (5412 + 5380 + 5212 + 4262 = 20266)
	5   19,758   tcl
      ----------------------------
	6   16,033   ada
	7   15,419   perl
	8   15,132   smalltalk
	9   14,390   asm.x86
       10   13,039   fortran
      ----------------------------
       11   10,438   postscript
       12   10,388   java
       13    8,758   clipper
       14    7,310   forth
       15    6,832   cobol
      ----------------------------
       16    6,012   rexx
       17    5,412   eiffel
       18    5,380   python
       19    5,212   lisp
       20    4,262   scheme
      ----------------------------

So just what point were you trying to make with your comparison, anyway?
-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Michael R. Blair   --.    ziggy@ai.mit.edu | MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab
   (617) 253-0765      \\    mrb@lcs.mit.edu | MIT Labor. for Computer Science
,,Lambda Calculus...   /\\_ ...uber alles!'' | 545 Technology Square--Room 439
http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/~ziggy/ziggy.html| Cambridge,  MA USA   02139-3594

Rick Lutowski wrote:
> 
> >>     2    6,832   cobol
> 
> This must explain why all the banks use cobol - can't afford mistakes
> when it comes to money transaction software!

:-)

From someone who used to work for a bank and saw 
(thankfully) someone elses COBOL program lose millions of 
dollars in 1 transaction ... I DON'T THINK SO!  

(Of course my C++ programs never lost anything) 

- don't put your money in banks ... people like me program there 
(well not anymore thank god)!

:-)

..darcy

-- 
   D'Arcy Smith, Systems Analyst
   Applied Research in Computer Systems (ARCS) Laboratory
   British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT), Burnaby, BC, Canada
   E-Mail: darcy@arcs.bcit.bc.ca        URL http://www.arcs.bcit.bc.ca
   Tel:  (604) 432-8281      		Fax:  (604) 436-1297

Kindly remove comp.lang.eiffel from distribution of this thread.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Colin James III, Principal Scientist  cjames@cec-services.com
CEC Services, 2080 Kipling St, Lakewood, CO  80215-1502   USA
Voice: 303.231.9437;  Facsimile: .231.9438;  Data:  .231.9434  
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I missed most of the earlier discussions on this thread (that may not
be an unmitigated disaster). However when one reads

> [From Michael R. Blair, <ziggy@rolex.ai.mit.edu>]
>
> Eiffel, python, lisp and scheme are all lisp-family
> languages

it is hard not to react, however futile the basic theme of this
mega-crosspost discussion may be.

In no serious way can Eiffel be considered a ``Lisp-family language''.
Of course any decent post-1958 language owes much gratitude to Lisp
(if only because of recursion and garbage collection). But beyond
that the Lisp and Eiffel style are entirely different, as even
a cursory look at textbooks or manuals for both languages will
immediately reveal.

(I hope there is no need for follow-ups, but if there is please
limit them to comp.lang.eiffel and comp.lang.lisp, as I will do
after this one.) 

-- 
Bertrand Meyer, ISE Inc., Santa Barbara (California)
805-685-1006, fax 805-685-6869, <bertrand@eiffel.com> - ftp://ftp.eiffel.com
Web home page: http://www.eiffel.com

	(The "lapel pin" [++] indicates adherence to the SELF-DISCIPLINE program
	for better Usenet discussions. See http://www.eiffel.com/discipline.)

I think most of the postings are because of problems that programmers 
experience. Hence, the lower the score, the better. I prefer my group to 
be somewhere in the middle.

I have missed the numbers somehow. Can somebody please mail them to me or 
post them again.

Thank you

In article <4at4t0$j5j@garden.csc.calpoly.edu>,
Dan Stubbs <dstubbs@garden.csc.calpoly.edu> wrote:
> The following table shows the number of posts to the "top 20" groups in
> comp.lang.*. Note that these numbers reflect adding up the posts for
> the various pascal and basic.visual groups. The java group has been moving
> up the list rather rapidly, and is undoubtedly in 11th place by now.
> 
>      1   73,453   basic.visual
>      2   71,298   c++
>      3   55,148   c
>      4   43,430   pascal
>      5   19,758   tcl
>    ----------------------------
>      6   16,033   ada
>      7   15,419   perl
>      8   15,132   smalltalk
>      9   14,390   asm.x86
>     10   13,039   fortran
>    ----------------------------
>     11   10,438   postscript
>     12   10,388   java
>     13    8,758   clipper
>     14    7,310   forth
>     15    6,832   cobol
>    ----------------------------
>     16    6,012   rexx
>     17    5,412   eiffel
>     18    5,380   python
>     19    5,212   lisp
>     20    4,262   scheme
>    ----------------------------
> 

  You have clearly put a lot of work into producing this raw data.

  We should all thank you for your efforts.

  Now do you think you are brave enough to tell us what this all means?

  This is very very raw data. 

  If you can not supply any meaning or interpretation of the data then it 
  practically useless to anyone.

  If you do not classify the contents of the posts into more detail the data 
  has no great value.

  I already suggested a very simple classification scheme:-
  There are three classes of post {capability, help, noise}.

  You can probably go into more detailed classification if you think
  the data warrants more detailed classification.

  Or invent a better clasification scheme of your own to break the content
  of the posts down into meaningful classes.

  If data is not interpreted to be used to refute a hypothesis it is of 
  no real value; and simply gives the illusion of informing people of 
  something that may be of use in their decision making processes.

  Such illusions lead to confusion and poor decision making.

  If the data is no use in decision making it is no use at all!
  It just becomes noise to be filtered out.

  Unless, you consider that this data belongs to the entertainment category
  of information. There is always a market for entertainment!

  You may not have realised when you started this counting exercise that
  you have opened a very old and smelly can of worms!

  The prospect of scanning thousands of fragments of natural language text 
  to classify their meaning to human beings takes you into the mysterious 
  and forbidding realms of "Artificial Intelligence",  and you will notice 
  that the typical languages used for natural language interpretation come
  right near the bottom of your list!   Languages such as Lisp and its 
  variants have been used to attempt to wring some meaning out of text 
  fragments, with varying degrees of success. Human language is still too 
  weird for the average computer architecture and a whole battery of AI 
  languages. You have not even mentioned declarative AI languages such as 
  Prolog. Nor have you mentioned functional languages such as Miranda.

  Even artificial neural networks struggle to discover what
  we humans call 'meaning' on anything but very small domains. 

  So by opening this can of worms, to mix metaphores, you are on the horns 
  of a dilemma!

  You can supply masses of raw data to people using some counting
  algorithms, but the probability of your discovering any meaning 
  in this data is vanishingly small! 
  
  I have just realised that I may classify this data in the amusement category.
  
  You have provided us with some good amusement for the holiday season.

  Thank you!


  If you can seriously solve this problem you should probably get a dozen
  Phd's. So I hope you succeed , we will all benefit from your discoveries.

  Some AI people have been trying to extract meaning out of raw text for 
  twenty years or more. Philosophers have been trying for thousands of 
  years, but that is another story!   

  
   I have seen one pattern in your data that may amuse you.

   Let me propose a hypothesis:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
   The intelligence of the language is inversely proportional to the 
   number of posts made for that language.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

   Now there is a hypothesis/theory that you or someone else might like 
   to refute.

   You might like to think about a corollary to this hypothesis:
   hint: it involve the words 'intelligence', 'computer language(s)' and 
   'people'.
 
   Have fun! 
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

  PS. On a more sombre note, you could attempt some sort of statistical 
  sampling techniques on the data and use the humble human eyes and 
  brains as prime (primal) technologies.

  You will need some sampling criteria to stratify the data.
  You are going to need to do a lot of experiments until you discover
  a reasonably repeatable way of selecting a representative sample of 
  your data.

  Then you might try to read individual posts and classify them according
  the {capability, help, noise} classification or a better one.

  It may be possible to use some AI techniques to do some filtering.

  There are lots of texts on statistical sampling theory, and probably
  numerous maths graduates could help you.

  If you take this seriously you may discover some very interesting
  things along the journey.

  Happy holidays


  My Best Regards

  Des Kenny
  Director
  Objective Methods Ltd
  PO Box 17356
  Wellington
  New Zealand
  Phone: 64 4 21 610 220
  Fax:   64 4 476 9237
  Email: dkenny@swell.actrix.gen.nz
   
  

At a recent Python workshop we discussed the fact that since Python has
a number of mailing lists (called SIGS, such as Matrix-SIG, GUI-SIG,
etc.) the traffic in comp.lang.python is lower. This is thought to be a
good thing, in general, but someone did raise the possibility that
people would judge the interest in the language based on newsgroup
counts. 

Newsgroup counts would be correlated, positively or negatively, with the
number of newbies, number of users, number of people having homework in
that language, number of subtle points in the language, number of design
flaws in the language, presence or abscence of a user who is a vexaxious
litigant or net equivalent, external mailing lists, difficulty of
porting, number of platforms supported, number of journals devoted to
it, etc. I don't see that the raw numbers tell you much. There are
several groups I would be interested in but don't read due to
signal/noise problems.

BTW, Python and Eiffel are not lisp-family languages. 

-- 
Paul F. Dubois, L-472				(510)-422-5426
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory		FAX (510)-423-9969
Livermore, CA 94550				dubois1@llnl.gov
Consulting: PaulDubois@aol.com

There are _tons_ of variables involved.  Posts can be for:
	-- where are docs?
	-- language is confusing
	-- what's the language standard?
	-- what's a good algorithm for...
	-- where can I find info on...
and several others.

Then you must take into account:
	-- how popular the language is
	-- can people who use that language easily get to usenet
		(many times unix vs. other platform)
	-- the language is so easy no one has questions
	-- people use the FAQ and it is useful
	-- the language has been around forever
	-- the language is brand new
	-- the language's standard is ill-defined/changing
	-- the number of different platforms supported by the language
	-- the robustness of compilers/interpreters for the language
	-- development tools available for the language

and probably (as Carl Sagan would say) "billions and billions of other
pieces of fluff, in the ever expanding cosmos that is the usenet."

Statistics can be made to tell pretty much any story you want.

The only thing the list tells us definitively (assuming the numbers were
collected properly) is "there were/are x articles posted to group y."

Let's not try to read any further into it.  It's an interesting count,
but there are too many variables involved to use these numbers for
anything else.

(It's kind of like saying "if I don't find many errors in a code review,
the review did not do its job."  What if the code was good, and there
were not many errors?  What if multiple errors of the same kind were
only reported once?  What about code size?  What abou code complexity?
What about anything else?   Eeeeeeekkkkkk!)

-- Scott


JD Venter wrote:
> 
> I think most of the postings are because of problems that programmers
> experience. Hence, the lower the score, the better. I prefer my group to
> be somewhere in the middle.
> 
> I have missed the numbers somehow. Can somebody please mail them to me or
> post them again.
> 
> Thank you

-- 
Scott Stanchfield     McCabe & Associates -- Columbia, Maryland
(These are not necessarily the opinions of McCabe & Associates)
      Visit McCabe & Associates at http://www.mccabe.com

In article <4atme6$4ef@taco.cc.ncsu.edu>,
Igor Chudov <ichudov@espcbw.stat.ncsu.edu> wrote:
>IMHO, simple languages that are easy to learn and formalize do not
>generate as much traffic as languages with complex syntax, semantics,
>great nuber of rules and exceptions. 
>
So how do you explain Visual Basic being at the top of the list?

>So these numbers can actually indicate not "goodness" or even
>"aceptance" of a certain language, but rather its complexity to
>beginners.

I agree that the numbers don't reflect "goodness", but they must
represent acceptance, to some extent. I totally disagree that 
they represent complexity.

If anything, they represent "interest". I haven't touched Java yet,
but read here to learn about it. 

Tom Werry (gpsnav@pacific.net.sg) wrote:
: You could at least close by thanking the guy.  Btw, does your
: scorecard count his article as a minus in the groups he posted to?
: ------------------------------------
: Taking your point more seriously, I think we could judge the value of
: any particular language or development tool by how many other people
: around the world bothered to say anything about it.  

I think the basic point could be summarized thus:

  There are twice as many blue marbles as red marbles.

  What may we infer?

  There are twice as many blue marbles as red marbles.

The trouble is that in a newsgroup, short of reading ALL postings and
categorizing them based on content, I don't think article count tells
much; there are simply too many uncontrolled variables to generalize
beyond the surface observation.  Maybe the VB groups get lots of spam,
I don't know, but I'm not prepared to draw conclusions based on article
count alone.  This completely sidesteps the far more disturbing question:
even if article count indicates market share and public awareness, does
visibility or market penetration indicate the quality of a language?

I seem to remember some quotation about lies, damn lies, and statistics.

--
Christopher Oliver                     Traverse Communications
Systems Coordinator                    223 Grandview Pkwy, Suite 108
oliver@traverse.com                    Traverse City, Michigan, 49684
'tis an ill wind that blows no minds.

Dan, the original poster, was kind enough to drop me a note
explaining the source of the numbers. It appears as though
the numbers are being misinterpreted by most of us.

The numbers used were simply the message numbers of the most
recent message posted in each group. I have no idea whether
those message numbers are really an accurate count of all
messages ever posted to a group, but if they are, then that's
what was being ranked: the total number of messages ever posted
to a particular group (with some groups being combined, as he
said.)

This, then, is far more a measure of the age of the groups than
it is a measure of their *current* popularity. Of course, popularity
is the Y axis of the curve whose "area under the curve" was
being measured but in this case, since the X range varies so
dramatically from group to group, it's difficult to draw
almost any conclusion.

It seems to me that the "total number of postings last month"
for each group would be a bit more interesting, and might not
be too hard for some enterprising young programmer looking for
a quick project to manage. (Dan, by the way, has no interest
in going any farther with it. He didn't intend it to be any
big deal to begin with.)

While it's true that the nature and mix of postings will vary
a great deal from group to group, there is still a sense in
which number of postings per unit time acts as a *rough*
proxy for interest level. No matter what the content of the message,
in general, the fact that you will take the time to write
something at all (rather than just doing something else)
means you have some interest in the subject. Because of this,
I think it would be interesting to see the current monthly
tallies. The monthly tallies graphed over a long time
period would make a very interesting web page, if someone
feels like doing it. It would be fun to see the leap
of interest in Pascal that came with Delphi, the jump in
Perl brought by the web, the recent Java wave, the steadiness
of Cobol, etc.

__Glen Perkins__
-- 
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+

dstubbs@garden.csc.calpoly.edu (Dan Stubbs) wrote:

>The following table shows the number of posts to the "top 20" groups in
>comp.lang.*. Note that these numbers reflect adding up the posts for
>the various pascal and basic.visual groups. The java group has been moving
>up the list rather rapidly, and is undoubtedly in 11th place by now.


Interesting statistics there!   We started a Programming Wide Internet
Site just under a month ago.  We solicited for members in all the
newsgoups and are now getting about 20 new members daily.  Here's
the breakdown as of  as of December 16, 1995 

 Members                          344
 ----------------------------------------------
 Language                 Subscribed
 ----------------------------------------------
 HTML                        147
 C Languages             122
 CGI                            111
 Perl                            109
 Java                          102
 Visual Basic                 76
 Clipper                         89
 SQL                             58
 Usenet                         49
 Delphi                          45
 Pascal                          41
 FoxPro                         40
 Assembly                     39
 dBase                          34
 Oracle                          33
 Excel                           30
 Lotus                           28
 Basic                           28
 Paradox                       25
 Fortran                         17
 Visual Object               16
 COBOL                        16
 Benchmarks                 11
 FiveWin                         7
 Progress                        6
 Informix                          6
 Ingres                            3
 Forth                              3
 ADA                               2
 VRML                            2
 TCl                                 2

It's not surprising to see the Web Programming Languages ranking at
the top.  And you were right about Java Group.

Craig David Horton
DBasics Software Company
http:\\pacificnet.net\~dbasics\users_group

Umm ... "questions, bugs and problems" ... What about *answers*? :-)

Since I can do little else, I assume that this is actually something
like gross numbers of postings (without filtering).  The question that
springs to mind is "What do numbers of postings indicate?".  Certainly
related to number of people subscribed to various newsgroups.
Probably related to the "difficulty" of learning the language and
propensity of the language towards bugginess.  Probably related to
penetration of the language into university/college/school courses.

IMHO none of these *actually* has anything to do with *best* -- all it
really indicates is the rough proportion of bandwidth consumed.

"Best" really means "whatever gets the job done efficiently", and on
that score you pick the tool for the job.  

Also IMHO Polylingualism is the only way to go.  Of course we all have
our favourite languages, but who am *I* to say that COBOL is a heap
of parrot droppings just because it is utterly useless for the sorts
of programs I have tended to write?


-- 
___________________________________________________________________
Randall Gray	gray@ml.csiro.au        CSIRO Division of Fisheries

In article <4b89p2$f63@news.rain.org> Bertrand Meyer <bertrand@eiffel.com> writes:

   > [From Michael R. Blair, <ziggy@rolex.ai.mit.edu>]
   >
   > Eiffel, python, lisp and scheme are all lisp-family
   > languages

   In no serious way can Eiffel be considered a ``Lisp-family language''.

My mistake. I apologize. I had clearly confused Eiffel with some other
language.

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Michael R. Blair   --.    ziggy@ai.mit.edu | MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab
   (617) 253-0765      \\    mrb@lcs.mit.edu | MIT Labor. for Computer Science
,,Lambda Calculus...   /\\_ ...uber alles!'' | 545 Technology Square--Room 439
http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/~ziggy/ziggy.html| Cambridge,  MA USA   02139-3594

>(3)  The guy who came up with the forward slash addressing in UNIX is
>a disgruntled DOS system developer that got fired without severance
>pay.

What came first. The DOS backslash or the Unix forward slash. I was under
the impression that it was the Unix forward slash that was first.
-- 
Procrastinate now!
Jay Goldberg
jayg@accessware.com
jayg@iwl.net
http://www.tlmworks.com/People/jrg/jhp.html
http://www.iwl.net/customers/jayg

dbasics@pacificnet.net (DBasics Software Company) wrote:


>Craig David Horton
>DBasics Software Company
>http:\\pacificnet.net\~dbasics\users_group
         ^^                     ^              ^

I sometimes receive email from those saying they can't access our
site. I sit back and wonder if ..... their browser?  ...... the tilde
in DBasics is interpreted differently? ...... or maybe they are the
type of people that doesn't know how to find their AUTOEXEC.BAT file?

Well it's none of the above!   It's because DBasics Software Company
(yours truly) needs how to learn to address his site properly.

Why does UNIX use forward slashes and DOS uses backslashes
in their addressing?  I suppose it so us programmers can  

(1)  keep gainfully employed because someone asks that question

(2) When they created the operating systems, keeping up with the
Jones's was not fashionable and being an individual was

(3)  The guy who came up with the forward slash addressing in UNIX is
a disgruntled DOS system developer that got fired without severance
pay.

(4)  Or someone had a dream that Craig would screw up something called
an article on something  called the Internet about something
concerning his address.  Sounded like that someone shouldn't have
eaten before going to bed  ..... but what the heck .... if the dream
was real, we can put egg on this guy, named Craig's, face.

Happy Holidays!

Craig David Horton (wearing egg today)
DBasics Software Company
http://pacificnet.net/~dbasics/users_group
      ^^                     ^              ^




Craig David Horton
DBasics Software Company
http://pacificnet.net/~dbasics

In article <4bbjbo$n8r@news.iwl.net>, jayg@iwl.net (Jay Goldberg) writes:
>>(3)  The guy who came up with the forward slash addressing in UNIX is
>>a disgruntled DOS system developer that got fired without severance
>>pay.

>What came first. The DOS backslash or the Unix forward slash. I was under
>the impression that it was the Unix forward slash that was first.

What a bizarre concept.  Unix came first by over a decade, and wasn't
the first to use '/' even then, it was based on Multics, which was, if
I recall correctly, the first major OS with hierarchical directories
and which used the slash to create pathnames for them back in the 70's,
and long before DOS ever came about.  For crying out loud, DOS 1.0 didn't
even have hierarchical directories, they were retconned into it in 2.0,
in the early 80's!
-- 
| .-.   .---..---. .---. .-..-. |"In general, the art of government consists |
| | |__ | | || |-< | |-<  >  /  | in taking as much money as possible from   |
| `----'`-^-'`-'`-'`-'`-' `-'   | one ... citizen ... to give to the other." |
| My opinion alone, every word. |  - Voltaire, "Money" (1764).               |

Jay Goldberg (jayg@iwl.net) wrote:
: >(3)  The guy who came up with the forward slash addressing in UNIX is
: >a disgruntled DOS system developer that got fired without severance
: >pay.

: What came first. The DOS backslash or the Unix forward slash. I was under
: the impression that it was the Unix forward slash that was first.
: -- 

Certainly, UNIX predates the IBM PC.  One main reason UNIX uses / is
that it was a lot easier to type for such a frequently used character.
UNIX used -x for options where DOS copied the CPM construct of using
"/x" for options (who intern picked up the idea from some of the early
DEC OS's).

-Ron

In <4bcf8m$v1h@nntpd.lkg.dec.com> larrys@enemax.zk3.dec.com (Larry Smith) writes:

>
>
>In article <4bbjbo$n8r@news.iwl.net>, jayg@iwl.net (Jay Goldberg) writes:
>>>(3)  The guy who came up with the forward slash addressing in UNIX is
>>>a disgruntled DOS system developer that got fired without severance
>>>pay.
>
>>What came first. The DOS backslash or the Unix forward slash. I was
under
>>the impression that it was the Unix forward slash that was first.
>
>What a bizarre concept.  Unix came first by over a decade, and wasn't
>the first to use '/' even then, it was based on Multics, which was, if
>I recall correctly, the first major OS with hierarchical directories
>and which used the slash to create pathnames for them back in the
70's,
>and long before DOS ever came about.  For crying out loud, DOS 1.0
didn't
>even have hierarchical directories, they were retconned into it in
2.0,
>in the early 80's!

I think Multics was in the late 60's. Also, the Dartmouth time-sharing
system (DTSS) the inventors of BASIC and the first working time sharing
system, also had hierarchical directories, at least as early as 1968.

Mike Schmit

-------------------------------------------------------------------
mschmit@ix.netcom.com           author:
408-244-6826                    Pentium Processor Programming Tools
800-765-8086                    ISBN: 0-12-627230-1
-------------------------------------------------------------------

In article <4bc95m$gis@zippy.cais.net>,
DBasics Software Company <dbasics@pacificnet.net> wrote:
>I sometimes receive email from those saying they can't access our

...or perhaps the real reason is...
5) Unix used / as a path separator (and, incidentally, came before dos).
   Dos 1.0 didn't support subdirectories and thus didn't *have* paths.
   They used / for a command-line switch indicator, much like - is in
   Unix.  When DOS 2.0 came out with hard disk support (for the whopping
   10MB disks!) they needed to come up with a path separator, but, oops,
   / was already taken, so they used \, rather than introducing a
   compatibility problem.  PRobably a dumb mistake.
-- 
Richard Cooley Extraordinaire | Linux   Linux   Linux | My opinions, not MIT's.
            pixel@basenji.com | pixel@gnu.ai.mit.edu  | pixel@usa1.com
       Daisemi'in rhhaensuriuu meillunsiateve rh'e Mnhei'sahe yie ahr'en:
         Mnahe afw'ein qiuu; rh'e hweithnaef mrht Heis'he ehl'ein qiuu.

DBasics Software Company wrote:
[....]
> 
> Why does UNIX use forward slashes and DOS uses backslashes
> in their addressing?  I suppose it so us programmers can
> 
[...]
> 
> (3)  The guy who came up with the forward slash addressing in UNIX is
> a disgruntled DOS system developer that got fired without severance
> pay.

Can't be.

UNIX was around before DOS.
The first version ran in 1969-70 on PDP7 and PDP9 computers.
Maybe it was the otherway around?

Incidentally there are a lot of keyboards where '\' is a real
pain to type whereas '/' is no problem.

NB. Followups radically cut to just comp.lang.misc.

-- 
Mike Chapman, Munich                                       
   Some programming languages manage to absorb change,     
   but withstand progress.                                 
       -- Epigrams in Programming, ACM SIGPLAN Sept. 1982

DBasics Software Company (dbasics@pacificnet.net) wrote:
|> dbasics@pacificnet.net (DBasics Software Company) wrote:

|> Why does UNIX use forward slashes and DOS uses backslashes
|> in their addressing?  I suppose it so us programmers can  

|> (1)  keep gainfully employed because someone asks that question

|> (2) When they created the operating systems, keeping up with the
|> Jones's was not fashionable and being an individual was

|> (3)  The guy who came up with the forward slash addressing in UNIX is
|> a disgruntled DOS system developer that got fired without severance
|> pay.

|> (4)  Or someone had a dream that Craig would screw up something called
|> an article on something  called the Internet about something
|> concerning his address.  Sounded like that someone shouldn't have
|> eaten before going to bed  ..... but what the heck .... if the dream
|> was real, we can put egg on this guy, named Craig's, face.

(5) Because when DOS adapted its hierarchal file system from Unix, the /
was already in use as the traditional options indicator.  So they needed
something else to do the job.

At the systems call level (open, etc.), DOS has always accepted both.
But many of the earlier DOS programs would never pass a argument
beginning with a / down to the system, they would parse it for program
options.
-- 
James Kanze           (+33) 88 14 49 00          email: kanze@gabi-soft.fr
GABI Software, Sarl., 8 rue des Francs Bourgeois, 67000 Strasbourg, France
Conseils, études et réalisations en logiciel orienté objet --
              -- A la recherche d'une activité dans une region francophone

Pixelated! wrote:

this is soo way off topic it's not funny!

..darcy
-- 
   D'Arcy Smith, Systems Analyst
   Applied Research in Computer Systems (ARCS) Laboratory
   British Columbia Institute of Technology (BCIT), Burnaby, BC, Canada
   E-Mail: darcy@arcs.bcit.bc.ca        URL http://www.arcs.bcit.bc.ca
   Tel:  (604) 432-8281      		Fax:  (604) 436-1297

gperkins@netcom.com (Glen C. Perkins) wrote:
>This is very interesting, and I thank you, Dan, for running the
>numbers. I am curious, though, about the interpretation. Is this
>the total number of messages in each group that are currently on
>your server? That would make the numbers dependant on your news
>server's setup (how long msgs are kept, etc.)
>
>Is it from a counter that counted the number of messages
>arriving on your server last month? This year? Is it from some
>source other that *your* news server?
>
>Don't misinterpret this as criticism. It's that your posting
>is interesting enough that I would love to know more details.
>
>One thing that I would love to see is a graph showing the number
>of posts per month for each of the top 20 languages going back
>a few years and updated monthly. That would make a pretty hot
>web page!
>
>Thanks,
>__Glen Perkins__
>
>-- 
>+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
>

OK, here's how

Go to DejaNews http://www.dejanews.com/forms/dnq.html

click on create a query filter

select your group eg comp.lang.python
click on submit form

Note set size ( comp.lang.python gives current set size 1180 )

Repeat for other groups
comp.lang.c++ 12424
comp.lang.c++.* 15901
comp.lang.java 7146

Optionally set dates

Write down more numbers

Post it to these groups. There don't you feel like you've done something
instead of just wished for it
-- 
Lloyd Fischer  lloyd@dvcorp.com (work) fischer@crocker.com (home)       
DataViews Corporation                     |
47 Pleasant St, Northampton, MA 01060     | from disclaimers import standard
Voice 413 586-4144 Fax 413 586-3805       |

In article <4bcf8m$v1h@nntpd.lkg.dec.com>,
Larry Smith <larrys@zk3.dec.com> wrote:
>
>What a bizarre concept.  Unix came first by over a decade, and wasn't
>the first to use '/' even then, it was based on Multics, which was, if
>I recall correctly, the first major OS with hierarchical directories

I believe Multics used a very strange pathname consisting of
<'s and >'s , eg. >usr>lib . I dont know what < was used for.
maybe it was a synonym for ..

dbasics@pacificnet.net (DBasics Software Company) wrote:

>dbasics@pacificnet.net (DBasics Software Company) wrote:


>>Craig David Horton
>>DBasics Software Company
>>http:\\pacificnet.net\~dbasics\users_group
>         ^^                     ^              ^


>Why does UNIX use forward slashes and DOS uses backslashes
>in their addressing?  I suppose it so us programmers can  

>(1)  keep gainfully employed because someone asks that question

>(2) When they created the operating systems, keeping up with the
>Jones's was not fashionable and being an individual was

>(3)  The guy who came up with the forward slash addressing in UNIX is
>a disgruntled DOS system developer that got fired without severance
>pay.

I kept all of the above because they are are relevant, but the last
bears a bit of discussion.  UNIX was probably first when it came to
using a slash for path names.  Rumour has it that DOS developers (read
YouKnowWho) were worried about copyright stuff if they used the same
slash as UNIX, therefore DOS uses the backslash, rather than the
forward slash which is in a much more user-friendly spot on the
average keyboard.  Then some genius decided to use the forward slash
as the default switch for DOS commands, such as dir /p, ensuring that
compatibility would be lost forever.

As an interesting aside, many libraries for C compilers would treat
the forward slash as a valid path separator until recently, if they
are not still doing so.


>Happy Holidays!

>Craig David Horton (wearing egg today)

And to you, try rum and egg-nog instead -- tastes better and washes
off faster.

Duncan

In article <4bg95m$3ck@insanity.foxnet.net>,
Duncan Ruxton <druxton@foxnet.net> wrote:
>As an interesting aside, many libraries for C compilers would treat
>the forward slash as a valid path separator until recently, if they
>are not still doing so.

Actually, it takes nothing for C libraries to accept /; and,
in fact, if the C libraries are *not* treating / as a valid
separator, they are using extra code to ensure that / is not
recognized (based on the incorrect assumption that \ is the
only valid directory separator). If you have played around
with int 21h calls yourself, you will know that / has always
been, and still is, a valid directory separator. Every time
I see a program that rejects / I will conclude that that
program is broken beyond repair.

-- 
Ambrose C. Li ~{@h>tHY~}       ~  byron is my Linux box; io.org is my
                               ~ `Internet service bureau', not where
<@io.org:acli@byron.net4>      ~  I work. MS Windows will not become
<ai337@freenet.toronto.on.ca>  ~  the OS standard; Linux will be there.

On Sun, 24 Dec 1995 22:30:58 GMT, Ambrose Li <acli@byron.net4.io.org> wrote:
> 
> Actually, it takes nothing for C libraries to accept /; and,
> in fact, if the C libraries are *not* treating / as a valid
> separator, they are using extra code to ensure that / is not
> recognized (based on the incorrect assumption that \ is the
> only valid directory separator). If you have played around
> with int 21h calls yourself, you will know that / has always
> been, and still is, a valid directory separator. Every time
> I see a program that rejects / I will conclude that that
> program is broken beyond repair.

... and this means that lots of standard DOS programs, including
COMMAND.COM, are broken beyond repair, because these programs do not
accept / on the command line as a valid directory separator, int 21h
nonwithstanding.

To make things worse, starting with DOS 3.something or DOS 5.0 (I
forget which), Microsoft disabled the internal function which allowed
the user to change the default 'switch character' from / to whatever
he or she desires.  This has the effect of hard-coding this switch
character as / on the command lines of programs such as COMMAND.COM,
and in all the internal commands such as 'dir', 'chdir', etc.

In other words, DOS itself is beyond repair.

-- 
Lloyd Zusman    	01234567 <-- The world famous Indent-o-Meter.
ljz@asfast.com          ^	     Indent or be indented.

In article <4bcf8m$v1h@nntpd.lkg.dec.com> larrys@enemax.zk3.dec.com (Larry Smith) writes:

] In article <4bbjbo$n8r@news.iwl.net>, jayg@iwl.net (Jay Goldberg) writes:
] >>(3)  The guy who came up with the forward slash addressing in UNIX is
] >>a disgruntled DOS system developer that got fired without severance
] >>pay.
] 
] >What came first. The DOS backslash or the Unix forward slash. I was under
] >the impression that it was the Unix forward slash that was first.
] 
] What a bizarre concept.  Unix came first by over a decade, and wasn't
] the first to use '/' even then, it was based on Multics, which was, if
] I recall correctly, the first major OS with hierarchical directories
] and which used the slash to create pathnames for them back in the 70's,
] and long before DOS ever came about.  For crying out loud, DOS 1.0 didn't
] even have hierarchical directories, they were retconned into it in 2.0,
] in the early 80's!

Paul Allen said in a Wired interview ("Accidental Billionaire")
that he meant to use a forward slash but he used the backslash by
mistake because of his dyslexia.  I'm not sure I believe this,
however.
-- 
David Fox	   http://found.cs.nyu.edu/fox		xoF divaD
NYU Media Research Lab			   baL hcraeseR aideM UYN

In article <u191k7meja.fsf@njal.ml.csiro.au>,
Randall Gray <gray@njal.ml.csiro.au> wrote:
>propensity of the language towards bugginess.  Probably related to
>penetration of the language into university/college/school courses.

That's probably it...

In fact, I would take issue with those who declare that these are
worthless statistics unless you have more information about the
nature of postings about the languages listed.

Make a log-rank (X-axis) vs. log-count (Y-axis) plot using the
figures at the end of this posting. The points on a typical
plot of this kind will fall roughly on a straight line that
neccessarily goes from upper left to lower right. But in this
data you'll see that there is a sharp break in popularity
between the top four languages and the fifth.

This suggests that there is some overwhelming single factor
that makes the top four languages generate more discussion --
of whatever kind -- than the ones below them. My guess is that
this factor is the youthful weighting of Usenet demographics.
Pascal is mainly a student language, no? And C is the language
of choice for computer science students, no? And visual
Basic...I've heard of it, but it must be so new that our news
server had all of 12 messages in the comp.lang.visual
newsgroup, so I couldn't even get an idea of what it is!

  log rank  log count
    0.00    4.87
    0.30    4.85
    0.48    4.74
    0.60    4.64
    0.70    4.30
    0.78    4.21
    0.85    4.19
    0.90    4.18
    0.95    4.16
    1.00    4.12
    1.04    4.02
    1.08    4.02
    1.11    3.94
    1.15    3.86
    1.18    3.83
    1.20    3.78
    1.23    3.73
    1.26    3.73
    1.28    3.72
    1.30    3.63

In article <DK43vn.Jso@byron.net4.io.org>,
Ambrose Li <acli@byron.net4.io.org> wrote:
>only valid directory separator). If you have played around
>with int 21h calls yourself, you will know that / has always
>been, and still is, a valid directory separator. Every time

Mmmmm, int 21h ax=3701h, dl=new switchar, if you set it to anything but '/',
'/' becomes the path separator and the new switchar works.

But there were problems with this--it was always kludgy from what I saw.
dir/w/p was ok,
dir-w-p wouldn't work.
A few programs were hardwired to accept '/' only, which bites.  Many programs,
e.g., Turbo assembler, use '-'.

>I see a program that rejects / I will conclude that that
>program is broken beyond repair.

Like all of the programs that come with DOS after version 3.3 or 4, at
which time the switchar use was apparently abandoned in favor of
hard-coding '/'.  This can be demonstrated by setting the switch charater
(incidentally, if you look in Borland's stdio.h or maybe dos.h, you will
see a pair of functions, int getswitchar(void) and void setswitchar(int),
which are not documented anywhere, but work, although I've only look at BC++
2.0) under version 5 to anything but '/', and typing dir/w, which will fail,
as will many other utilities that shipped with DOS.  I've tried this under
5.0 and 6.0.

Incidentally, '/' *is* a valid path separator in the Windows 3.1 common
file dialogs, however, overly long filenames are *not* silently truncated
as under dos, 'this_big_file.txt' or 'this.ttttt' give 'invalid filename'
errors. I haven't tried this with the win 95 common dialogs.
-- 
Richard Cooley Extraordinaire | Linux   Linux   Linux | My opinions, not MIT's.
            pixel@basenji.com | pixel@gnu.ai.mit.edu  | pixel@usa1.com
       Daisemi'in rhhaensuriuu meillunsiateve rh'e Mnhei'sahe yie ahr'en:
         Mnahe afw'ein qiuu; rh'e hweithnaef mrht Heis'he ehl'ein qiuu.

In article <4bec1s$fr1@gabi.gabi-soft.fr>, J. Kanze <kanze@gabi-soft.fr> wrote:
>At the systems call level (open, etc.), DOS has always accepted both.
>But many of the earlier DOS programs would never pass a argument
>beginning with a / down to the system, they would parse it for program
>options.

Not quite right. Even new DOS programs (and Windows programs)
parse the filenames and never pass the / down to the system.
And not just on the command line: they do that even to the
filenames the user input from within the program.

-- 
Ambrose C. Li ~{@h>tHY~}       ~  byron is my Linux box; io.org is my
                               ~ `Internet service bureau', not where
<@io.org:acli@byron.net4>      ~  I work. MS Windows will not become
<ai337@freenet.toronto.on.ca>  ~  the OS standard; Linux will be there.

In article <y5a3fa8e9ft.fsf@graphics.cs.nyu.edu>,
David Fox <fox@graphics.cs.nyu.edu> wrote:
>In article <4bcf8m$v1h@nntpd.lkg.dec.com> larrys@enemax.zk3.dec.com (Larry Smith) writes:
>
>] In article <4bbjbo$n8r@news.iwl.net>, jayg@iwl.net (Jay Goldberg) writes:
>] >>(3)  The guy who came up with the forward slash addressing in UNIX is
>] >>a disgruntled DOS system developer that got fired without severance
>] >>pay.
>] 
>] >What came first. The DOS backslash or the Unix forward slash. I was under
>] >the impression that it was the Unix forward slash that was first.
>] 
>] What a bizarre concept.  Unix came first by over a decade, and wasn't
>] the first to use '/' even then, it was based on Multics, which was, if
>] I recall correctly, the first major OS with hierarchical directories
>] and which used the slash to create pathnames for them back in the 70's,
>] and long before DOS ever came about.  For crying out loud, DOS 1.0 didn't
>] even have hierarchical directories, they were retconned into it in 2.0,
>] in the early 80's!
>
>Paul Allen said in a Wired interview ("Accidental Billionaire")
>that he meant to use a forward slash but he used the backslash by
>mistake because of his dyslexia.  I'm not sure I believe this,
>however.

When Microsoft started adopting ideas from their Ideal operating system
"Xenix" which they licensed from AT&T, and AT&T called Unix, they wanted
to make sure they would not be sued.  IBM didn't want something they would
have to pay royalies to AT&T for, and Digital Research (CP/M) went surfing
instead of meeting the IBM guys... so Bill bought an OS that was a lot
like CP/M for the 8086, and then went from there, swiping ideas from 
Unix, but modifying them ever so slightly.   That is why DOS people can 
become comfortable in Unix very quickly if their fear doesn't stop them
from opening their eyes.

Do / became \, - became /, etc.  See the file on my FTP site talking 
about this.  The filename is ftp://ftp.wgs.com/pub2/wgs/cmndxref.txt
It is the manuscript for an article published in DataBased Advisor.  
While you are there, look at the rest of this index, you might find
other interesting things to look at.

Mark

-- 
        Mark Bolzern :  mark@wgs.com    WorkGroup Solutions, Inc. 
          Try WGS Linux Pro, WebKit, and FlagShip, You'll lovem
http://www.wgs.com,  ftp://ftp.wgs.com/pub2/wgs/Filelist OR mail: info@wgs.com
                USA Tel: 303-699-7470  Fax: 303-699-2793  

In article <DK9u94.8JH@gcs.com>, mark@gcs.com (Mark Bolzern) says:

> Digital Research (CP/M) went surfing instead of meeting the IBM guys... 

The way *I* heard the story, he (Gary Kindal) went 'flying' not surfing.

    From: Jay Goldberg <jayg@iwl.net>
 
    Unix came first by over a decade, and wasn't the first to use '/'
    even then, it was based on Multics, which was, if I recall
    correctly, the first major OS with hierarchical directories and
    which used the slash to create pathnames for them back in the
    70's, and long before DOS ever came about.

Actually, Multics uses the `>' character for downward directory
addressing, and `<' for upward addressing.  Eunuchs, being the
ill-conceived, castrated, pseudo-Multics that it is, had to mash
them into the `/' and `..' that we all know and hate.

And Multics started using that syntax in the 60's, not the 70's.  BTW,
Multics systems still run at several locations, such as
DOCKMASTER.NCSC.MIL and MULTICS-A.PMS.FORD.COM (hidden behind a
firewall).  Anyone know the addresses of the others?

In article <4bqcmf$lpg@senator-bedfellow.MIT.EDU>,
Pixelated! <pixel@gnu.ai.mit.edu> wrote:
>In article <DK43vn.Jso@byron.net4.io.org>,
>Ambrose Li <acli@byron.net4.io.org> wrote:
>>I see a program that rejects / I will conclude that that
>>program is broken beyond repair.
>
>Like all of the programs that come with DOS after version 3.3 or 4, at
>which time the switchar use was apparently abandoned in favor of
>hard-coding '/'.  [...]

The functionality of the setswitchar() system call disappeared in
DOS 4.0; the system call still exists, but it does nothing.
Up till DOS 3.3, setswitchar() does what it is supposed to do.

What I had in mind in my original posting has nothing to do with
setswitchar() though. What I meant was more like: whenever I see
stupid compiler manuals saying that you *must* write

  #include <sys\\stat.h>
               ^^
(say) in your DOS C programs, or when I see my path truncated or
rejected when I input a path with slashes, I want to hit those
software authors in their heads.

>Incidentally, '/' *is* a valid path separator in the Windows 3.1 common
>file dialogs, [...]

Unfortunately, many programs apparently do extra postprocesing so
that / will *not* be accepted as a valid path separator.

-- 
Ambrose C. Li ~{@h>tHY~}       ~  byron is my Linux box; io.org is my
                               ~ `Internet service bureau', not where
<@io.org:acli@byron.net4>      ~  I work. MS Windows will not become
<ai337@freenet.toronto.on.ca>  ~  the OS standard; Linux will be there.

I appreciate everyone's attempt to educate me on the history of UNIX
and DOS syntax.  I thought it was obvious that I was attempting to
cover up my improper use of "/" in our URL by moonlighting as a
comedian.  I was wrong.

To try to bring the dry humor to light .... I am dyslexic.  I didn't
intend for my article to be taken so seriously in it's content.
Ironic how this had turned into a discussion of it's own.  

Please quit sending me private email asking me to burn things
into my gray brain cells.  My brain cells have enough on their mind.

notroH divaD giarC
DBasics Software Company
http://pacificnet.net/~dbasics/users_group