Memory Lane
Thanks for such a brilliant article and very interesting - I won't go into when I was doing this or that - but as a young greenhorn starting off in IT in the mid 80's in it was all very fast moving and without the internet it was harder to get a top level view of who was doing what at the time; thank you for bringing more clarity regarding some of the things going on in those times.
It's enjoyable reading to think back about the possibilities and it seems like we are back there again in a critical period regarding where IT is heading.
I remember the larger financial institutions were the IBM shops adopting OS/2 and staying with it - as an ordinary observer, it seems Windows 3 then hit the World like a tidal wave.
Perhaps worthy of a mention is the Sanyo Icon mini-computer venture in early nineties that attempted to hedge bets to some extent and bridge the gap by bridging the back end with a Novell server and thus allowing hot-key access between the Windows 3.1 x desktop / network, native Unix and the PICK shell. This approach may have paid off had Unix apps been more adopted and global - we certainly had issues with compiling other vendors Unix apps even though the OSF set of standards was supposed to address this - I think the Unix vendors were busy fighting for the cake whilst MS was busily promoting a relatively user-friendly and integrated environment.
(BTW - Pick was a wonderfully easy variable length O/S allowing very for quick development, not bad with graphical add on GUI interfaces like System builder / Frog/ etc - yes I liked it !). Apparently, IBM approached Dick Pick to ask about adapting PICK to become the basis of their PC O/S but he turned them down - does anyone know if this true or throw light on it....?
Biting the hand that feeds IT
