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In defense of modern software (Re: Debian on an old PC)



On Sun, 2005-01-09 at 03:47 +1100, Sam Watkins wrote:
> On Thu, Jan 06, 2005 at 07:31:10PM +0100, Vegard Lundby Rekaa wrote:
[snip]
> I think we would end up with much better software if all developers were
> forced to use old, slow computers :)  I remember how good and fast the
> software was on my old RISC OS Acorn with 4MB RAM (Impression, Sibelius,
> Artworks).  Something is seriously wrong with the way people write
> software these days!

I have to somewhat disagree.  Much modern software just *does 
more*(1) than, and is more integrated with the DE, than old(2)
software.  

And don't forget that s/w written in C++ is larger and slower
than C programs.

But yes, VM can make people sloppy.  OTOH, it can allow them to
write easier-to-read s/w, because of the lack of need to write
dense, hard to debug, code that wrings the last bit of speed out 
of the box.

Ron

1) Which sometimes, but not always, is Creeping Featuritis.

2) Macintosh excepted, but it had it's own problems: the geniuses 
who wrote it had to be brilliant to squeeze all that greatness into
a 64KB ROM, and the hacks they had to do mad it difficult to make
multi-finder, do protected multi-tasking, and port the s/w to Power.

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Ron Johnson, Jr.
Jefferson, LA USA
PGP Key ID 8834C06B I prefer encrypted mail.

"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will
not bite you. This is the principal difference between a man and
a dog."
Mark Twain

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