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From: crds@ncoast.UUCP (Glenn A. Emelko)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc,comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Software Technology is NOT Primitive
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Date: Mon, 26-Oct-87 07:19:34 EST
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Posted: Mon Oct 26 07:19:34 1987
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Lawrence (and all),

I have been involved at an engineering level in both hardware and software
design for about 10 years.  Across these years I have seen advances in both
industries, but I must say that I am more impressed with what I see in the
way of hardware technology.  In some ways, it seems, software has degraded
somewhat because of hardware progress.  This has been, and most likely shall
continue to be one of my pet peeves of the whole industry.

First of all, I can remember (as many of you can too) machines which had 4K
of memory, or 16K, and still had to have a rudimentary OS running which could
perform some tasks and still allow the user to load a program.  In those rough
times, people were very concerned and concious about storage, both on disk, as
well as memory usage.  This forced software engineers to think creatively, to
tighten code, and to produce very powerful LITTLE algorithms that could do
many things and could be called from many other parts of the code.  Code was
many times designed to be recursive, if not reentrant, and it was expected
that the software engineer knew alot about the machine and environment (in
terms of the hardware) that was hosting the program, which allowed for tricks
and little magical wonders to happen (laughing, in other words, the designer
took advantage of what was available).  In contrast, today, many designers
know nothing about the destination machine (it's a UNIX box?), and most are
not very concerned about how much memory, disk space, or anything else that
they use, and really could care less if there are four subroutines in their
code which could be combined into one general purpose all encompasing sub.

Further more, it seems, now that we have 3-MIPS and 5-MIPS and higher-MIPS
machines being sold over the counter at reasonable prices, very little time
is spent by the software engineer to really PUSH that machine to it's gills.
In fact, I have noted many specific cases of generally sloppy, slow, and
out-and-out crude coding techniques passing as "state of the art," simply
because it is running on a machine that is so blindingly fast that it does
make that code seem reasonable.  Case and point:  I can recall designing a
sorting algorithm for a data management system which was very popular in the
early '80s for a specific Z80 based computer, and then one day pulling out
a copy of the "state of the art" data management/spread sheet program of '84,
which ran on a 8088 based system, and benchmarking them against each other
for about 20 different test cases (already sorted, sorted reverse, alpha only,
numeric only, fractional numbers, alpha numerics, and numerous data sets),
and watching the Z80 based computer beat the 8088 based system 10 to 1 at
WORST!  And as an added note, the sort on the Z80 was stable, and the one
on the 8088 was not!!!  Yes, I am talking about the "most popular" spreadsheet
of 1984, and a lowly Z80 machine ripping it to shreads!  Is this the current
state of software technology?  Yes, I believe so.

At the same time that I have shared these "beefs" about software development,
I have mentioned advances in hardware which allows the software guru to get
lazy and still be considered current.  We have processors today which can
out-run the processors of 1978 (10 years ago) by 20 to 1.  We have software
today which can probably be out-run by the software of 1978, even when we use
it on that powerful processor.  Sure, it's USER FRIENDLY, ERGONOMIC, etc., but
does it keep pace with the advances in the industry?  Why don't I see ANY
software advances that are even an order of magnitude above 1978?  This would
give me 200 times the power, considering the advances in hardware!!  I would
like to get my hands on a copy of "current software" which shows me this
capability, please email me info, or respond on the net.

Yes, these opinions are specifically mine, and reflect upon nothing other than
my own personal experiences, pet peeves, and general bullheadedness.  Feel
free to differ with any or all of the above, but at least get a laugh out of
it.  I find it funny myself.

Glenn A. Emelko
...cbosgd!hal!ncoast!crds

Somehow, this borrowed caption seems appropriate:

     "When I want your opinion, I'll give it to you."