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Fri Feb 19 02:14:55 1982
WorkS Digest V2 #14
>From JSOL@USC-ECLC Fri Feb 19 01:48:48 1982
Works Digest Friday, 19 Feb 1982 Volume 2 : Issue 14
Today's Topics: Administrivia - No More Digests
Topics For Discussion
Perceived Or Actual Complexity Of Systems
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Date: 19 February 1982 0013-PST
From: The Moderator <JSOL AT USC-ECLC>
Subject: No more digests
Effective with this issue, WORKS is now an direct distribution list.
Due to the low volume of mail, I will abandon the digest distribution
for this list. I may start doing digests again if the list starts to
become active again. Mail may be sent to WORKS@MIT-MC or WORKS@BRL.
The archive location has not changed, and will continue to be updated.
Please continue to mail problems and maintainence requests to
WORKS-REQUEST@MIT-MC or WORKS-REQUEST@USC-ECLC.
Enjoy,
--JSol
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Date: 13 February 1982 1838-EST (Saturday)
From: George.Coulouris at CMU-10A
Subject: topics for discussion
1. Multiprocessor workstations
How many processors should a workstation have? If more than one, how
should they be exploited?
I am not thinking of the dedicated processors built in to disk
controllers, etc., although there is probably some mileage in
dedicating a processor to file handling and another to scan conversion
for the display (i.e. converting characters and graphical objects to
bit-map representation). The thing I find puzzling is: in a
single-user interactive system, is more than one processor needed to
provide the interactive response, even in sophisticated applications?
Has anyone got any practical or theoretical experience in this area? I
am a firm believer in the need for multiple cooperating processes to
structure the application software and enable the user to schedule his
own activities amongst a number of interactive task contexts, but at
any one instant, he/she is only interacting with one of them.
2. Software extensibility
Is it important to most users to be able to add functions to their
workstation? If so, do the extensions need the full power of a
programming language? Are we anywhere near to being able to offer
such a language to non-programmers?
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Date: 17 February 1982 1639-EST (Wednesday)
From: Jeff.Shrager at CMU-10A
Subject: Perceived or actual complexity of systems
I am seeking pointers to papers etc on the actual or perceived
complexity of programming languages, systems, interfaces, or processes
relating to computers (debugging, editing, etc). Are there any good
dimensions along which to measure perceived complexity? Have any
experiments been done to measure this? (Note that the kind of
complexity that we are interested in is not directly related to
complexity of algorithms whose metric is of the sort: NSquared, or
NLogN. Rather, we are looking for measures in terms of learning
curves, or funnction use statistics (or anything else that might
indicate this sort of "human" complexity, not "mathematical"
complexity)).
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End of WorkS Digest
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