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From: ken@cs.rochester.edu (Ken Yap)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Software Technology is NOT Primitive
Message-ID: <3789@sol.ARPA>
Date: Sun, 1-Nov-87 17:15:37 EST
Article-I.D.: sol.3789
Posted: Sun Nov  1 17:15:37 1987
Date-Received: Thu, 5-Nov-87 21:28:43 EST
References: <3695@sol.ARPA> <275@gethen.UUCP>
Reply-To: ken@cs.rochester.edu (Ken Yap)
Organization: U of Rochester, CS Dept, Rochester, NY
Lines: 23

|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.

Unfortunately, for many products, the choice is between spending more
time and hiring better people, or getting it out fast. You can guess
which option a startup hungry for cash flow will take. Who cares, it's
the customer's RAM board, right? Not that I advocate this spendthrift
behaviour, but that's the real world.

Then again, the curve of returns vs effort flattens out near the top so
trying to squeeze the last 20% of performance out of software is REALLY
going to cost.

I know I want to do my job as effectively as possible, but then I'm not
a developer and for them there are no easy solutions.

	Ken