Re: Ada95 speed

[Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com>]

In article <7jafeo$6ps@lotho.delphi.com>,
  tmoran@bix.com wrote:
> Certainly in 1971 there were plenty of multitasking,
> resource
> sharing, graphic display running, computers around.  Of course
> they cost a million bucks but then they also were much less
> powerful than a modern Mac or PC.  And given how long it takes
> just to *start* a modern editor (or other program), one can be
> forgiven for wondering whether there's been much net
> improvement.

First, you don't go far enough, there were plenty of
multitasking, resource sharing, graphic display running
computers around and they did NOT cost a million bucks.

Microcomputers were not invented when IBM introduced the PC!

There are many many data points, but for example, I wrote
several real time operating systems for various microcomputers
for Honeywell at the time (amazingly some of this equipment is
still in use at United Airlines counters). These were not
expensive computers, they cost a couple of thousand dollars.

As to the time used to start a modern editor, this is an apples
and oranges comparison. As computers have got faster, we expect,
and indeed come to take for granted, FAR greater functionality.
Consider for example just the fact that your "modern" editor
can use arbitrary non-mono-spaced fonts. That takes a huge
amount of computing power, but we can afford it these days.

Yes, we waste a lot of computing power these days, in two ways.

1. Implementing features that are nice to have, but very
expensive in computing resources.

2. Making life easier for maintainers and programmers (e.g. by
using high level and very high level languages, scripting
languages, shell scripts etc).

Sure, the old software still runs, and it runs AMAZINGLY fast
(my old trusty PC editor DVED is amazingly fast, but really
who cares if the amount of processing per keystroke has gone
down from 10 milliseconds to 20 microseconds?????

Now, there is, as there ALWAYS has been, junk software that
takes far too long to do what it needs to do. It is sometimes
impossible to figure out why something takes so long.

Furthermore, the phenomenon of the programmer getting further
from the machine means that you have a lot of VERY incompetent
programmers, roaming around at a high semantic level without
the foggiest notion of the consequences of their actions.

Even with a relatively low level language like Ada I am amazed
how FEW Ada programmers have a clear idea of the machine
language they are generating, and use ferociously inefficient
constructions without the slightest awareness that this is the
case.

But in the old days, I often saw people write absolutely
appalling assembly language, so there is no immunity here from
incompetence :-)






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