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From: farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Software Technology is NOT Primitive
Message-ID: <275@gethen.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 31-Oct-87 18:05:39 EST
Article-I.D.: gethen.275
Posted: Sat Oct 31 18:05:39 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 5-Nov-87 07:48:21 EST
References: <3695@sol.ARPA>
Reply-To: farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren)
Organization: Sci-Fido - Unix in Oakland
Lines: 33


In article <3695@sol.ARPA> ken@cs.rochester.edu (Ken Yap) writes:
>Let us not forget that the computer is a tool and that raw computing
>speed is but one measure of the effectiveness of the hardware.  If that
>computing power has to "go to waste" in a spreadsheet program, I don't
>care, as long I get *my* job more effectively. All those cycles going
>into painting a bitmap window, think it's a waste? Fine, want to design
>METAFONT characters with punch cards, or even a glass TTY?

Certainly not.  The point, though, is the question "Are all of the
applications currently available and under development being written
so that they exhibit the maximum efficiency possible, both in speed
and in size?".  The answer, in many cases, is definitely "NO".  The
common availability of massive amounts of RAM and raw computing speed
has spoiled a lot of programmers.  Projects which would have been con-
sidered "rough drafts" ten years ago, because of their massive consumption
of resources, are being released as final products.

Windowing systems are a good example.  Would you rather have a windowing
system which occupied less than 256K of code space, and produced windows
on demand, and fast enough so the delay in opening them and working with
them is nearly imperceptible, or would you rather have one that takes up
over a megabyte, and operates so slowly as to be a constant frustration?
I've seen both types running on equivalent hardware, and have no problem
deciding which one I prefer.  The problem is, though, that the speedups
which come with every new generation will mask the deficiencies of the
slower product, and if it then becomes fast enough to use, who will care
whether or not it is as efficient as possible?  I would want the answer
to THAT question to be "every software engineer", but I have to say that
the answer I see more often is "only a few conscientious engineers".

-- 
----------------
Michael J. Farren      "... if the church put in half the time on covetousness
unisoft!gethen!farren   that it does on lust, this would be a better world ..."
gethen!farren@lll-winken.arpa             Garrison Keillor, "Lake Wobegon Days"