12 Mar
2023
12 Mar
'23
12:26 p.m.
On Mar 11, 2023, at 5:34 PM, Chuck Guzis
<cclist(a)sydex.com> wrote:
On 3/11/23 13:28, Paul Koning wrote:
I agree entirely. What Dijkstra was doing was evaluating a number of machines to see if
they would serve as the university's primary computer. And given the 1620's
limitations he had good reason to conclude that it's not well suited for that job.
Suited for more limited jobs? Definitely.
paul
Dijkstra said as much when he evaluated the 1620 for possible use by the TU Eindhoven --
a big problem is that it was unable to handle arbitrary 8-bit data.
Oh heck, there's no way to test for a numeric blank. Compare works only
for numeric data. The system can't tell the difference between a card
punched with 8-4 or 8-4-1, for example. Lots of holes in the
architecture. But that doesn't mean you couldn't do useful work with it.