1 Oct
2017
1 Oct
'17
11:24 p.m.
Paul Winalski <paul.winalski(a)gmail.com> writes:
RMS finally got a true stream mode interface circa
VAX/VMS version 5,
three releases after the DEC C compiler was first released.
I ported C-TeX to VAX/VMS 5, using the straight stream mode for I/O, and
was annoyed by how slow it was. I ended up writing my own glue to have
it write binary RMS files in 512 byte blocks instead, and the speed
increase was very gratifying. We're talking several times faster.
I remember how this made our VAX 780 able to process TeX files at just
about the same speed as my 12MhZ 286 PC, when I was alone on the system
at night. Then I discovered it did it just as fast during the day, with
about a hundred other users on the machine. :)
-tih
--
Most people who graduate with CS degrees don't understand the significance
of Lisp. Lisp is the most important idea in computer science. --Alan Kay