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From: stevel@haddock.ISC.COM (Steve Ludlum)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc,comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Software Technology is NOT Primitive
Message-ID: <1495@haddock.ISC.COM>
Date: Mon, 26-Oct-87 10:27:02 EST
Article-I.D.: haddock.1495
Posted: Mon Oct 26 10:27:02 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 28-Oct-87 04:30:04 EST
References: <3405@ece-csc.UUCP> <638@its63b.ed.ac.uk> <1811@watcgl.waterloo.edu> <3471@sol.ARPA> <590@ihopa.ATT.COM>
Reply-To: stevel@haddock.ima.isc.com.UUCP (Steve Ludlum)
Organization: Interactive Systems, Boston
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Xref: mnetor comp.lang.misc:791 comp.software-eng:8


In article <3471@sol.ARPA>, crowl@cs.rochester.edu (Lawrence Crowl) writes:
> It looks to me like software and hardware technology have tracked fairly well.
> The cause for the difference in perception is that hardware has done the same
> task cheaper and faster while software has performed an ever more difficult
> task.  Because hardware has simpler measures, it has more apparent progress.
> The actual progress is roughly equivalent.

Hardware doing the same thing faster? Parallel processors are not just faster
they are different. Symbolic machines use different hardware techniques, i.e.
tags. Laser disk do simply store more information but the difference means
much more than just being able to do more of the same thing. Specialized
hardware designs such as DSPs are opening up new areas such as speech and
vision automation, oh and don't forget those little network controllers
on a chip.

Anyway all of the progress in software has just been taking care of a 
few more special cases :-)

ima!stevel