On 5/9/07, Keith Carpenter <carpcon@xxxxxxx> wrote:
Steve Richter wrote:
> too bad IBM does not publicize or even remember the innovators who
> designed the S/38.
>
> -Steve
As with the AS/400, IBM published a "IBM System/38 Technical
Developments" book around the time of the system's introduction (1978).
ISBN 0-933186-00-2.
Thanks for the ISBN. I ran it thru amazon ( no hits ) and then
google. Found an interesting discussion by smalltalk people on
similarities between smalltalk and the as400;
http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/rssBlog/rademers_computing.xml
"...There is MUCH MORE to this beautiful systems architecture than I
can describe here, but I do want to point out how fantastic it would
be to marry it with Smalltalk. Some of Smalltalk's key ideas (class
objects, inheritance, dynamic message binding and polymorphism) were
not publicly available at the time the System/38 was designed in the
late 70's. There were many discussions among the architecture staff
about finding a way to bring some of the system's object-based
facilities into the programming languages the S/38 planned to support
(RPG and COBOL, initially, but many other languages, today), but there
were schedules to meet and the target market for the S/38 had no such
requirements. ..."
"...When I first learned Smalltalk (in about 1983), I knew I'd seen
the promised land, but I was not able to sell it to the "powers that
be" at IBM Rochester. Later, a version of VisualAge Smalltalk was
implemented on the AS/400, but it was a straightforward implementation
that did not take advantage of the AS/400's unique architecture (and
it was never really marketed). ..."
"...But there is at least one multi-language VM that succeeded
extremely well; the "system-level" VM of IBM OS/400 -- "system-level"
because it was as an integral part of the operating system. The key
difference is that this VM was designed to support a variety of
well-known procedural languages; namely RPG, COBOL, PL/I, C++ and its
own high-level Assembler Language ..."
-Steve
midrange.com
