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Aucbvax.6223 fa.works utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!works 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 ----------------------------------------------------------------------

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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