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From: mce@tc.fluke.COM (Brian McElhinney)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Spleen venting (was: Re: 32-bit OS)
Message-ID: <10636@fluke.COM>
Date: 24 Aug 89 18:31:26 GMT
References: <1989Aug23.181850.22509@cs.rochester.edu>
Sender: news@tc.fluke.COM
Organization: Guild of the Software Defenestrators
Lines: 20

In article <1989Aug23.181850.22509@cs.rochester.edu> miller@CS.ROCHESTER.EDU (Brad Miller) writes:
>Gee, you're right! Well, Apple, I certainly hope you will support only
>BIGNUM arithmetic for ints, so you can support future infinite address space
>machines. After all, why have any fixed precision when there is still
>available memory? And that will make all our current programs work just as
>inefficiently when you change processors. ;-)

We're talking system software here.  System software using 16-bit integers on a
32-bit CPU is an arbitrary limit.  It's the same meme that gave us the 8086 the
same year as the 68000.  "No one could possibly need a single variable larger
than 64K."  You don't agree with that, I hope.  Why are QuickDraw, Control
Manager, etc, any different?

[For the 128K Mac might have been wise because it saved RAM at a time when
there was hardly *any* RAM for applications.  I doubt it would have much
impact now]
 
 
Brian McElhinney
mce@tc.fluke.com