RealTime is a general and relative descriptor.

If the system must maintain certain sets of conditions within known
and stated time constraints, and must never have faults or failures,
and its going to run on a PC, I'd be more worried about power failure
or motherboards dying than I would that OS/2 couldn't keep up to a 
certain fixed workload.

Realtime systems to control Jet engines are slightly different
than real time systems to control a factory floor operation.

I work as a programmer in the latter field.

You could call what I write "real time" systems however, if the
process constraints are not met, my computer doesn't close any control
or safety loops, it simply acts as a supervisory or managerial node.

But it's still somewhat RealTime oriented.

So you see, the phrase has a lot of shades of meaning, and it's about
as meaningful or as meaningless as "OOP" or "WYSIWYG",
or any other
buzzword.  

You'd need to know what specific area of realtime systems this person
was working in, why they are using a PC (to run OS/2) instead of 
an embedded firmware device if this thing is supposed to be of the
former type of realtime system.

If you are going to run a PC, you sure better run OS/2. At least
it offers memory protection and pre-emptive multitasking, unlike DOS
or Windows.

You can write in Assembler if you like, but the speed difference is not
nearly so important as the lower likelihood of bugs in C++ code. C++
is type safe and polymorphic, giving you flexibility with a decent amount
of safety.  It is better suited to handle problems in its own code
(through the C++ exception mechanism), and will be simpler to debug, 
producing a higher quality final deliverable system, given that you have a
fixed project budget, thats a heck of a lot more important than a few
cycles of speed difference.  Besides IBM C++ 2.1 comes which one heck of a
good optimizer, and a really nice profiling tool to help measure efficiency
and speed and help tune the application.

Anyone who wants to code assembler is welcome to it. I currently have no
need for it in any of my applications.  

Warren

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