Conference 7.286::digital

    	"technologically impaired" is a value judgement that is quite
    unjustified. Firstly, choosing not to use something that is not useful
    to your job is just common sense, and it is not clear that his job
    requires the use of a computer.
    
    	Secondly, there is a matter of personal preference. I *HATE*
    telephones, and I avoid answering them whenever possible. I use a modem
    to make all of my outgoing calls. All of my other communication is
    face-to-face, electronic mail, or Notes. I suppose this makes me
    technologically impaired. Again, if I have a manual to read I would
    rather have it on paper and lie in bed with it than use Bookreader in
    the DEC office. On the other hand, I could probably programme an AXP
    machine in hexadecimal better than 90% of the other employees of this
    company. Am I technologically impaired or just working the way I feel
    most comfortable?

re Note 3095.1 by PASTIS::MONAHAN:

>     On the other hand, I could probably programme an AXP
>     machine in hexadecimal better than 90% of the other employees of this
>     company. 

        I'm sure 90% of the employees of this company can't program
        an AXP in hex at all!

        Bob

re Note 3095.0 by TENNIS::KAM:

> Ironically, many of these technologically impaired people occupy positions of
> power in the corporate world.

        Running a large enterprise is also a "technology" of sorts,
        one of which I am mostly ignorant.

        Bob

        P.S. I write this with a bit of trepidation since I still
        wear a spring-powered watch.  However, I am reluctant to
        write anything on paper by hand that will be seen by another
        person since I've so come to depend on an editor and
        spelling-checker.

    re: .2
>        I'm sure 90% of the employees of this company can't program
>        an AXP in hex at all!
    
    	Heck! You're probably right. I have even met some employees that
    can't use Bliss-32 or PAL-8! We are working in a company of
    technologically whatsit employees. It wasn't like this when Ken first
    formed the company. Oh for the good old days when everyone in the
    company knew what business we were in and there was no personnel
    department!

    
    	Well, when Ken first set up the company, he didn't make any
    computers, that came a year or two later.
    
    	The company started off making PCB for some computer company called
    Burroughs - and no, I wasn't there at the time, but I read the history!
    
    				Malcolm.

    .-1
    
    \Malcolm.
    
    bliss and pal are like computer programming langauges.
    
    bliss is the one with the "." thing in it, we DECeeee invented bliss
    here in DEC many years ago to use it to write our software with, most of our
    system software is written in bliss.  
    
    hope this helps.
    
    \bye
    \nasser
    

    
    	Gee, thanks \nasser, guess I forgot the smiley!
    
    	At least you can spell my name!
    
         				Malcolm.

    Actually Bliss is used for a lot of VMS system software. Since we 
    support other operating systems that don't use Bliss at all it seems
    somewhat parochial to say we use it for "most" system software. Most of the
    PDP-11 system software was written in MACRO-11. Though I think some
    of the RSX stuff was in Bliss-11 (or was it Bliss-16?). A lot of the
    system utilities for RSTS/E was written in BASIC PLUS - one of the
    best languages for such things ever.

    PAL-8 probably refers to the PDP-8 assembly language. Though I think
    it was really called PAL 3. It's been awhile since I programmed in
    it so I'm not sure anymore.
    
    		Alfred
    
    PS: I believe that there was(is) a Bliss-36 for use on the PDP 10/20
    systems which of course had 36 bit words.

    Blockstructured Language for the Implementation of System Software was
    invented at MIT. The first implementation was for the PDP-10, but
    implementations for IBM, Prime and DG machines followed fairly quickly
    since it was designed as a portable compiler written in itself.
    
    DEC eventually recognised the advantages to this type of approach to
    software development, and around 1973 (I believe) started to work
    seriously on portable compilers for all their computer architectures.
    The first one was Bliss-36 for the PDP-10/20 36 bit architecture, but
    this was rapidly followed Bliss-16 and Bliss-32 for the PDP-11 and VAX
    architectures. Most of RMS was written in Bliss, and some of it was
    tested on PDP-11s before anyone got round to building a VAX machine. At
    the time it was (and possibly still is) outstanding in its code
    optimisation.
    
    Since then we have produced compilers for the MIPS, Intel and AXP
    architectures, and have been using them to port things like RDB to
    those architectures. However, with our usual stealth marketing
    techniques we are not selling these, and have just recently withdrawn
    Bliss-32 from our price book. This has rather miffed a few of our ISVs
    who had implemented in Bliss-32 and were hoping to port their code to
    other architectures. They just have to realise that our machines are so
    good that we don't need compilers or applications, except the ones we
    write ourselves.
    
    As \nasser says, Bliss is the language with the "." thing in it, and it
    used to be a competition amongst Bliss hackers to see how many you
    could get in a row and still have a meaningful working programme. The
    best I saw was "...", but I have no doubt that in VMS engineering they
    have managed better than that.

    Nit -- BLISS was not invented at DEC. It came from a university
    originally (CMU, I think, but I'm not certain).
    
    Next stage will be object-oriented BLISS, otherwise known as ..BLISS .

    re: .8
    	PAL 3 was the name for the paper tape assembler for the PDP-8. When
    they went to disk based operating systems they had the PAL-8, SABR,
    RALF, and eventually Macro-8 assemblers. PAL-8 and SABR are documented
    in "introduction to programming", DEC copyright 1969.
    
    	Macro-8 had a rather curious history. It was advertised,
    demonstrated at Decus, but when it came to submit it for shipment
    nobody could find the sources. They turned up a couple of years later
    on a customer site, but by that time nobody was very interested in
    PDP-8s any more.
    
    	I have used PAL 3, PAL-8 and RALF while I was a customer.
    
    	Bliss-10 and Bliss-11 were the MIT code, and were not very
    portable. This was the main reason for the DEC dialect modification to
    produce Bliss-36, Bliss-16 and Bliss-32.

    Dave
    
    I thought BLISS was System Software Implementation Language, Backwards

    
    	Now we are really talking - PDP10 eh?  Never was a PDP20 though!
    
    	PDP10 became the DECsystem 10 and the 20 was announced as the
    DECsystem 20.
    
    	Did you know that we only stopped selling PDP 8s about 3 years ago? 
    They were known as DECmate IIIs.  They developed WPS- from that, never
    did figure out why they called it WPS+ though, they left out several
    important features when they ported it from the DECmate!
    
    				Malcolm.

BLISS was invented at CMU.  MIT had nothing to do with it.

	Gerald Sacks
	BLISS developer

    BLISS - Basic Language for the Implementation of System Software
    
    First invented by Wiliam Wulf (Who never saw a GOTO he liked) and a few
    graduate students.  Gordon Bell may have also been involved.
    
    Implemented as BLISS on the PDP-10 KA, around 1970 or so.  Used in many
    research projects there before it caught on at DEC.   Early on, I think
    there was a sub project to generate code for the UNIVAC 1108 which
    never saw more than the light of dawn.
    
    BLISS-11, also CMU, was a cross compiler generating first Assembly
    (for MAC-Y 11) and the Object code for the PDP-11, specifically to build
    to support C.mmp which what the multi processor 11-05 (I think it was
    05) with a massive shared memory, multi processor configuration.
    
    Both had a neat command MACHOP, which definied a BLISS construct to
    generate the specified machine operator.  You guessed it (I assume),
    a couple of us took a chunk of the C.mmp kernel and defined
    
    	MACHOP JMP GOTO
    
    And sprinkled the same through the code, and left it where it sould be
    seen by the appropriate person (initials WW).  (It wasn't the fourth of
    July, but it was a good show).
    
    BLISS shipped on the 10 from DEC, first as a novelty, than as a way to
    implement subsystems (since they all came with source).  COMMON BLISS
    was an outgrowth of this construting a common dialect of BLISS for the
    "New machine" (32 Bits), the 10, and later as a cross compiler running
    on the 10 and 11.
    
    Don't know all of the dates for sure, but that is the essential flow.
    Al Lehotsky (if anyone knows where he is now) could probably do a much
    better job than I with this history, espicially for the internal to
    DIGITAL history and Common BLISS.
    
    Bill

    
    Getting back to .0...
    
    There's a message there, and it's one that many in this industry
    have ignored at their peril.  There are lots of people out there
    who dislike, fear, or are totally uninterested in computer
    technology.  And yet, they should be both our biggest challenge
    and our biggest opportunity.  The computer industry has catered
    to hackers, techies, and afficionados for years.  For many people,
    even the "easiest to use" PC packages represent more trouble
    than they're worth.  Rather than branding people as technical
    incompetants, we'll make more money by offering something they
    can not only live with but enjoy.
    
    Ron  

    
>    than they're worth.  Rather than branding people as technical
>    incompetants, we'll make more money by offering something they
>    can not only live with but enjoy.
    
    See Apple Macs ... computing for computer idiots! (that is statement of
    praise)
    
    Greg
    

>    See Apple Macs ... computing for computer idiots! (that is statement of
>    praise)

Let me rephrase this:  Macs are information tools for creative people
who have better things to do than waste their time and money on self
centered computer systems.
    
The computer industry has been migrating from systems like VMS and DOS
designed to use compute resources efficiently, to systems like Macintosh
designed to use human resources efficently ("User centered design").
Windows is the current mainstream of this migration, and is becoming
more Mac like every year.

- Peter

    On the other hand....
    
    If the decision makers in DEC can't/don't appreciate the high-tech
    products we sell, maybe their counterparts in the ranks of the
    customers can't/don't either.  They see flashy TV ads and  spurious
    claims in the business rags and base purchasing decisoins on that. 
    Now, if we can "think like the customer" in this regard, maybe we could
    get back into the black.  Of course this only addresses the problem of 
    sales.
    
    -dg

    	Yes, it was Bill Wulf, and the very first work on BLISS (-10)
    began in the summer of 1969.  The KA10 arrived at CMU with only DECtapes
    for storage (no disks, mag tapes, etc.), and in short order the
    work began with early routines written in assembly language.  And
    it was Gordon Bell who uncrated and connected up the machine.
    
    Dave Eklund
    

re .9:

>    Blockstructured Language for the Implementation of System Software was
>    invented at MIT. The first implementation was for the PDP-10, but
>    implementations for IBM, Prime and DG machines followed fairly quickly
>    since it was designed as a portable compiler written in itself.
    
I asked one of the people who worked on BLISS at CMU about this.  First,
the name's wrong: it's officially "Basic Language for Implementation of System
Software."  Unofficially, it's "Bill's Language..."

He worked on a version for the Honeywell 600/6000 series.  Bell Labs did one
for the IBM 370 series.  There were BLISS-like compilers done for various
Soviet machines.

    A couple of years ago (in connection with Dick Best's retirement party)
    I talked with Gordon Bell.  At one point I suggested he might want to
    consider sending mail over the network to Dick--kind of two ex-Deccies
    keeping in touch, was my thought.
    
    Gordon's response was of the form "yeah, I really ought to get my
    Macintosh hooked up to the network someday.  But you guys inside
    Digital have no idea how easy you have it--out here, network access
    is such a pain...."
    
    I doubt if anyone would put Gordon in the "technically impaired"
    category.
    
    
    I hate the telephone, myself.  I once kept a log for a year.
    You'll have to allow for the likelihood that I did not have the
    presence of mind to record each and every interaction I had with it.
    For what it's worth:  85% of my telephone interactions were what I
    call "scrap or rework."  Only 15% of the interactions recorded on my
    checksheet involved my talking with someone who wanted to talk to me.
    (I'm not deducting anything for times when we didn't actually get
    any business done--just the bare bones question, were the two people
    who wanted to speak with each other actually doing so.)
    
    I hate this Notesfile interface.  For years I resisted learning it,
    out of pique at having to use keyboard plainly marked with keytops
    like "next screen" and "select" above the arrows, none of which work
    as they advertise themselves in Notes--and having to use instead a
    totally arbitrary-seeming definition of the keys on the far-right
    keypad.  It's just such a glaring definition of--I don't know what.
    Bad engineering, I'm tempted to say.  Certainly not user-centered
    design.  More like user-be-damned design.
    
    I use it now, because it seems indispensable to being connected with
    what's happening, and because I find interesting information this way.
    But while I was resisting, I would not have wanted to be branded as
    in some way deficient.  I was trying to be efficient!
    
    
    I like to think that Engineering can and should be one of the
    Humanities.  This is not original, I read it somewhere and liked it.
    
    But people:  if we are to create technology for our fellow humans,
    we have to come from a basic tendency to respect and even like people,
    despite how different we find the other person from our own self.
    If we come from a f**k-you attitude, we'll probably get some of the
    same attitude in return.
    
    I'm afraid much of Digital's current difficulty can be traced to
    exactly this.
    
    
    What if even Mangers are humans?  Can we tolerate that idea?
    								Russ

re .-1

Right.  If, as is rumoured, some vast percentage of
the U.S. public can't even set the clocks on their
VCRs, then all *that* tells you is how bad most
VCR user interface designers are at their jobs.

    re: .23
    
    >then all *that* tells you is how bad
    
    or maybe it tells you how dumb most VCR users really are...!!??

    One thing, perhaps, to consider, is that there might be too much
    information on the "information highway".   How many times does one
    figure out what to do, only to be overridden by new information, that
    later proves to have no bearing on the situation.
    
    Not having direct access to a terminal, or the net, or ... DOES NOT
    TAKE AWAY THE LICENSE TO THINK.
    

        .24

    > or maybe it tells you how dumb most VCR users really are...!!??

    no. as \dave said so correctly , it tells us that the VCR does not
    have a user friendly interface.

    you dont have to be dumb not to know how to set the timer
    on the VCR, i myself for one can't do it and would not even try, but what 
    it shows you is that the when the designers design things they should 
    put the user'ability of whatever they are doing as first priority, over
    the schedule and the cost and over anything.

    it is no good shipping thing ahead of time if no one can use it because
    it is very complicated.

    \bye
    \nasser 

        A quick  story  about  men with hair on their chests and Bliss in
        their veins.
        
        Back in 1976 I and my local sales rep sold a system (DEC-20) to a
        diehard IBM customer who  wanted  to  use  it  as an APL machine.
        They bought it and we  discovered  that  APL-SF  was buggy adn in
        those days real support was done  by  the local software rep.  It
        was all written in Bliss and the  listing  was  4  feet  high.  I
        fixed  problems by single-stepping through the code on  an  LA???
        terminal and then taking the listing back to the office to figure
        what  might  be  wrong.  In those days real software  specialists
        ONLY write SPRs that had 3 headings:  Symptom, cause, fix.    Now
        those days were real fun!
        
        Anker

    
    RE: last few...I always thought that BLISS was ignorance :-) :-)
    
    Mike

Hmmm...
I was just wondering why a lengthy rathole about BLISS appeared
in a topic about "technologically impaired" individuals...

        Re:   <<< Note 3095.29 by DECWET::FARLEE "Insufficient Virtual...um...er..." >>>

>Hmmm...
>I was just wondering why a lengthy rathole about BLISS appeared
>in a topic about "technologically impaired" individuals...
        
        I guess you are deductively impaired ;-)

    re: deductively impaired
    
    Nah, s/he's just polite.
    
    --bonnie

    re .22:  
    > But while I was resisting, I would not have wanted to be branded as
    > in some way deficient.  I was trying to be efficient!
    
    And I'm sure the executive cited in .0 doesn't want to be branded as
    in some way deficient, either -- he's just being efficient, too!
    
    In both of your cases (and in my case, too), I think the real issue 
    is that the perceived benefits have to exceed the pain and annoyance
    of learning to do things a different way before any of us are willing
    to change.  The challenge to those trying to sell this technology is
    to make things easy enough to use that it's easy to get people to
    cross that barrier.  The challenge to people trying to truely be
    efficient is to recognize when change is worthwhile.  I assert that
    there is *no* manager in this country who is as efficient with a
    phone and a notepad as s/he could be with computer tools.  Even
    carpenters use computers these days, to plan estimates and keep 
    track of expenses!  
    
    	Enjoy,
    	Larry
    
    PS -- I've heard that hardly anyone can program their VCR's to 
    record shows, and I believe it.  I never heard that most people
    cannot program the *clock* on their VCR.  Programming the VCR
    clock is just about the same as programming a digital watch --
    except easier because the buttons are labeled.  What I suspect
    is really the case is that most people have never bothered to
    even try to program the clock on their VCR because they see no
    compelling reason why they need to.  Most people with digital
    watches, on the other hand, put up with the confusing interface
    because they are getting something that they want out of it.  
    There's a lesson for Digital in this, too.  LS