Re: old power, Short Vectors Versus Long Vectors

On Tue, 30 Apr 2024 19:38:54 -0000 (UTC), John Levine wrote:

The 650s at leat ran all night. Alan Perlis told me some amusing stories
of tripping in the dark over sleeping grad student wives who were
holding their husbands' place in line for the 650 in the middle of the
night. They soon made the scheduling more humane.

How did they do that, though? Other than by hiring operators to work those
shifts, so the users could submit their jobs in a queue and go home?

Those early computers were expensive, hence the need for 24-hour batch
operation to keep them as busy as possible, to earn their keep.

That batch mentality is still characteristic of (what’s left of) IBM
mainframes today.