Thoughts from IBM System/360 40th birthday party

Last night I went to the party at Mountain View's Computer History Museum hosted by IBM.  I figured it would be a low key affair with other curious folks like me.  Nope the parking lot was full and the lecture hall packed.  Had several laughs listening to Fred Brooks talk about the development of the System/360.  Fred’s the author of “The Mythical Man-Month”, one of the great project management books.  He also was the manager of the Job Control Language (JCL), which he terms “the worst programming language ever.”

A few things struck me about this event:

• The audience was overwhelmingly comprised of middle-aged white males.  No surprise there.  However, visible from my spot standing in the back of the room was that most of the middle-aged white males were balding and overweight, while many had scruffy facial hair.  Now, of course that’s the stereotype of the computer geek, but I thought it was fascinating to see it in practice.  Much more so than a typical developers conference crowd.  It also made me think hard about my own appearance.  I’ve got a bald spot on the back of the head that so far I’ve been able to keep covered without a comb-over.  I’ve been overweight for the past 15 years as well.  I’ve had scruffy beards, but these days I keep a goatee neatly trimmed.  It just made me think that I’ll have to work harder to get out of the stereotype.
  
• Fred Brooks talked about the firsts of the System/360 – 8-bit bytes (6 bits was the norm prior), standardized I/O, and family concept.
  
• He also talked about the dangers of success.  IBM became wildly successful selling the S/360 and later the 370 family of computers.  It blinded them to the opportunity in the mini-computer market and when DEC and Data General started growing in the 1970’s, IBM didn’t react.  However, both of those companies suffered the same pitfalls of success when PC’s came along in the early 1980’s.  IBM was then able to take that market by storm while DEC and Data General are gone.  Data General’s story is superbly documented in Pulitzer Prize winning book “Soul of a New Machine” by Tracy Kidder.

It was a fun evening.  I’ll blog more about this last point shortly.