[ih] Geek Terminology (was Re: Resource sharing)

[Larry Sheldon]

On 12/23/2012 12:47 PM, John Day wrote:
>> Remote Procedure Call?
>
> I have never been impressed with this.  First because RPC was always
>  synchronous, i.e. blocking.  (To me this is distributed in name
> only.) Computer scientists seem to be afraid of asynchrony. Second,
> because it isn't a *procedure* call at all. At best it has the
> semantics of a Fortran[sic**] function call, not even a subroutine call,
> let alone a procedure call.  At the time I would tease the RPC
> zealots (and they were) with either it was like co-routines in
> Cobol[sic**} or it was an elaborate way to encode one bit
> (request/response).  ;-)
>
> (I really detest the way we inflate terminology to make ourselves
> look good.)
>
> Similarly, when I have asked what was the big deal about peer-to-peer
>  [sic], a consistent answer I get as the speaker's eyes fog over and
> he says reverently, "A Host can be both a client and a server at the
> same time!"  Of course he is a bit crestfallen when I point out this
> has been true since the first IMP went in.  When you boil it down it
> turns out to be mainly a different name resolution facility, with a
> technique for hogging bandwidth that makes it look like a DDOS
> attack.

While I have been involved in "computing machines" (starting with
mechanical and electro-mechanical analog machines, continuing with
telephone switching machines and networks, the digital machines parsing
telephone book entries on a fixed-word-length machine BC*) and dealt 
with dial-up computer networks (including 230.4 kb and 1.3 mbit) in the 
1970s, I did not get into Internetish stuff until the early 1990s.  So I 
missed a lot of the fun discussed here, but I have long been interested 
in it as an old newbie might be expected to be.

Focusing on "(I really detest the way we inflate terminology to make 
ourselves look good.)" above there are several things about the use 
terminology that have long intrigued me, especially the fact that we*** 
have, in fact, a very limited vocabulary, and reuse terms for very 
disparate concepts ("program", "code", "address", "relay) or very 
similar words for disparate concepts ("thread", "string").

And we used to spend a lot of time debating the nature of the tools 
("interpreter", "assembler", "compiler") and their outputs ("absolute", 
"executable" ("dot bat"?), "relocatable", "collected", "linked").

And what is a CPU?

*Before COBOL

**I am always amused at "knowledgeable people" who don't know how to
spell FORTRAN and COBOL, but the speelchooker in Thunderbird does.

***Please forgive and forebear the arrogant use of "we", but I too am 
guilty of the charges here.
-- 
Requiescas in pace o email           Two identifying characteristics
                                         of System Administrators:
Ex turpi causa non oritur actio      Infallibility, and the ability to
                                         learn from their mistakes.
ICBM Data:  http://g.co/maps/e5gmy        (Adapted from Stephen Pinker)