After takin' a swig o' grog, The Ghost In The Machine belched out
this bit o' wisdom:
> In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Chris Ahlstrom
> <linonut@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>>
>> Imagine that! A "hobbyist" project surviving 17 years under that shadow
>> of Mordorsoft.
>>
>> Not only surviving... flourishing.
>
> It's not dead; I'll give it that (and I hope it never
> dies; AmigaOS is effectively out of the picture, for
> example). Also, Linux is rather popular with server and
> to a lesser extent mobiles (Symbian still being tops in
> that department).
>
> But Windows 95 had a far faster adoption rate, in 1995 or
> thereabouts. Of course it had a little help from MS-DOS.
And from a marketing campaign blitz by Microsoft.
> I'll admit to wondering as to Windows' rate of adoption
> in the 1985 timeframe, when it first came out.
Windows was pure crap until version 3. Right about when Microsoft stuck
a shiv in IBM's back.
--
The essential ideas of Algol 68 were that the whole language should be
precisely defined and that all the pieces should fit together smoothly.
The basic idea behind Pascal was that it didn't matter how vague the
language specification was (it took *years* to clarify) or how many rough
edges there were, as long as the CDC Pascal compiler was fast.
-- Richard A. O'Keefe
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