From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: * X-Spam-Status: No, score=1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID, LOTS_OF_MONEY,MSGID_RANDY autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,bcdac28207102750 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Robert Dewar Subject: Re: Ada95 speed Date: 1999/06/05 Message-ID: <7jb2b4$6eq$1@nnrp1.deja.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 485982705 References: <7jafeo$6ps@lotho.delphi.com> X-Http-Proxy: 1.0 x40.deja.com:80 (Squid/1.1.22) for client 205.232.38.14 Organization: Deja.com - Share what you know. Learn what you don't. X-Article-Creation-Date: Sat Jun 05 11:40:20 1999 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada X-Http-User-Agent: Mozilla/4.04 [en] (OS/2; I) Date: 1999-06-05T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: 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 :-) Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Share what you know. Learn what you don't.