Nevertheless, as one of those old-timers, I have to be concerned at the apparent total disregard for code efficiency. Far too many of the tools to make design and development efficient do so with inexcusably crappy code in the tools themselves.

The tools still need to be at least cognizant of efficiency or they will produce exponentially inefficient code. That is a complete and total waste of resources. If I am rich, it does not follow that I should be ignorant and throw stacks of money into the wind lest I become not rich. On the other hand, spending my riches wisely can make me a better businessman and able to be a better human being while retaining the richness to continue doing so.

So don't ignore efficient code as a waste of money, but choose wisely when to be spendthrift and when to be profligate.

On Fri, Jun 14, 2013 at 9:33 AM, Paul Mooring <paul@opscode.com> wrote:

I think as an extension of this thought, there's still plenty of systems programs writing really "tight" code. The linux kernel for example is pretty efficient, in my opinion it's on par with ye programmers of old. The difference now a days there's a *lot* more programmers and the field is much easier to get in to.

Paul Mooring
Operations Engineer

www.opscode.com

From: plug-discuss-bounces@lists.phxlinux.org on behalf of Kevin Fries
Sent: Thursday, June 13, 2013 6:43 PM

To: Main PLUG discussion list

Subject: RE: Then vs Now Programming WAS: Re: AMD vs Intel memory managemement

I think there is a big reality being missed here. Back in the "old days" when developers wrote "tight" code, that was out of necessity not out of some higher purpose. Computers did not do much, spell checkers were a luxury, as were point and click interfaces. I remember spending more money for my first 10MB hard drive than i would spend for a 1TB today. The price to write this tight code today is too high for the benefit it would bring. Yes code is more bloated today, but if you take a look at the bloat in proportion to the increase in memory, disk, and network speed, it could be argued that software has gotten smaller, not larger.

Just my $0.02

Kevin

On Jun 13, 2013 2:03 PM, "Carruth, Rusty" <Rusty.Carruth@smartstoragesys.com> wrote:

IMHO, the answer is yes. And the answer is no.

Operating systems in ‘the olde days’ were REALLY small, and didn’t do much. No gui, for one! (Well, ok, on the IBM 1130 I used the GUI was the flashing lights on the console!)

Shoot, the entire boot loader fit on a single 80 column punch card. The card had I think 12 bit positions per column, so that means we could load a program (from cards!) with 120 bytes of program. The computer ran 16 bit instructions, so that means in 60 instructions we could read binary data from the card reader (12 bits at a time), and store it into memory!

FORTRAN (and later C) and assembly language were probably the primary languages in use for applications.

As James said: “Cache? We don’t need no stinkin’cache!” Cache was a luxury that Idon’t think we even considered…

I’m not sure how much is language bloat, and how much is (perceived?) lack of need to be careful abo

--
Dazed_75 a.k.a. Larry

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