Re: The joy of FORTRAN

Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> writes:

In the early 90s, IBM was going through its troubles and selling off
and/or offloading lots of stuff (real estate, divisions, etc), including
lots of VLSI tools to industry VLSI tools vendor. However, the standard
VLSI shop was SUN machines and so everything had to be ported to SUN.

trivia: 1972, CEO Learson tried (& failed) to block the bureaucrats,
careerists, and MBAs from destroying Watsons' culture/legacy
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/john-boyd-ibm-wild-ducks-lynn-wheeler/

it was greatly accelerated during the failing Future System effort,
Ferguson & Morris, "Computer Wars: The Post-IBM World", Time Books
https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Wars-The-Post-IBM-World/dp/1587981394

... and perhaps most damaging, the old culture under Watson Snr and Jr
of free and vigorous debate was replaced with *SYNCOPHANCY* and *MAKE NO
WAVES* under Opel and Akers. It's claimed that thereafter, IBM lived in
the shadow of defeat ... But because of the heavy investment of face by
the top management, F/S took years to kill, although its wrong
headedness was obvious from the very outset. "For the first time, during
F/S, outspoken criticism became political

more FS info
http://www.jfsowa.com/computer/memo125.htm

then 1992, IBM has one of the largest losses in the history of US
companies and was being reorged into the 13 "baby blues" (take-off on
AT&T "baby bells" breakup a decade earlier) in preperation for breakup
https://web.archive.org/web/20101120231857/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,977353,00.html
https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,977353-1,00.html

we had already left IBM but get a call from the bowels of Armonk asking
if we could help with the company breakup. Before we get started, the
board brings in the former president of Amex as CEO, who (somewhat)
reverses the breakup ... but it was difficult time saving a company that
was on the verge of going under ... IBM somewhat barely surviving as
financial engineering company

--
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970