Re: [TUHS] Why did PDPs become so popular?

On 12/28/17, Noel Chiappa <jnc(a)mercury.lcs.mit.edu> wrote: I think you're right. The disinterest in marketing and advertising (Ken Olsen, and therefore DEC, had a "build it and they will come" mentality) was one aspect of the corporate culture. An example of its negative impact: When the Alpha EV5 came out, it was several times faster than anything else around. At the same time, Intel and AMD were involved in the clock rate race. Every time Intel leapfrogged AMD, they trumpeted in the media (both trade and public) that they'd produced the fastest microprocessor in the world. DEC did nothing to counter this false impression. DEC's corporate culture also led to slow decision making. DEC believed in consensus building--everyone had to buy into a decision before it was final. We low-level DEC engineers used to joke that any decision worth making was worth making ten times. Consensus building is great if you can reach a consensus, but terrible when you can't. What was needed was something more like Sun's "lead, follow, or get out of the way", or Intel's "disagree and commit". DEC was also prone to over-engineering its products. This slowed down time to market and also increased production costs. It's true that, particularly in software, spending extra time in design up front pays back in reduced maintenance costs down the road, but if you can't get V1.0 out the door within its market time frame, there will never be a V2.0. -Paul W.