[offtopic] Re: ugh, moore's "law"

[Alan Horkan <horkana tcd ie>]

please mark offtopic posts as such in the subject

On Fri, 23 Aug 2002, Maiorana, Jason wrote:

> Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2002 11:38:18 -0400
> From: "Maiorana, Jason" <jmaiorana idirect net>
> Reply-To: dia-list gnome org
> To: dia-list gnome org
> Subject: ugh, moore's "law"

Moores law is bullshit and does not actually hold.  It is more a rule of
thumb, and to a certain extent a self fullfilling prophecy as the
timetable seems to suit the hardware companies.

> > Moores law is increasingly making a mockery of the pain in the ass
> > installation systems that linux developers seem to prefer.  (Learn from
> > Apple and) Give me convenient fat binaries! it would take me less time
> in
> > the long run.
>
> if everyone leans on moores law it will leave us with some pretty slow
> computers. People have begun to use inneficient languages such a java,

Java has a bad reputation, it is not that slow.
Java is also fast enough.

Slower languages such as C/C++ replaced faster assembly languages because
convenient development usually far outweighs the benifits.

> and to compile binaries to bytecode or apples "fat binaries".
> Optimization is forgotten, instead everyone ships with debugging
> symbols.

good algorithms and high level design is generally better than timewasting
on optimisations for that last 1%

> Multiply this by every piece of software in your system, and you have
> an unmitigated disaster.

or on the other extreme you have binary incompatability, nasty package
management, and dll hell (maybe not on Linux but libpng2 versus libpng3
problems are really fucked up).

> CPU/compenent speeds have been supposedly going up, yet somehow

they have been going up.

> computers seem aesthetically slower as the years go by.

Gnome 2 is actually faster than Gnome 1.  It was one of their goals that
Gnome2 would not make a whole bunch of hardware obsolete.  (and if you
hardware is really that crap you should probably be running blackbox or
something)

but more reliable, and easier to program for and easier to use and and ...

"No rule is absolute, especially this one"
I prefer to do it my way, but if either of us were to take our approaches
to their extremese they would be absurd.  balance is required and an
awareness of both approaches essential.

I understand the benifits of your suggestions but i think the should be
reserved for more specific circumstances where that little bit extra makes
the difference.
I hope you understand the value of convience and usability and more
efficient development.  (if not then i hope you have hours of fun
hand coding that assembler and complining everything from source :P ).

Later
Alan


PS this is just getting silly,