[OT] [I mean totally OT] Re: What can you "new"

[Don]

Walter Bright wrote:
> Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> Walter Bright wrote:
>>> Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>>>> Doesn't matter what you're making, OS or not, the choice of language 
>>>> *certainly* carries repercussions throughout a project. Sure Linux 
>>>> is doing fine with C. So what? It could probably be doing a lot 
>>>> better with D.
>>>
>>> It's like if you gave the Spartan Leonidas a Henry repeating rifle - 
>>> he still would have lost at Thermopylae. But there is little doubt 
>>> that one Henry repeating rifle is worth a hundred spear-chucking 
>>> wicker-armored immortals.
>>
>> Sometimes I run these crazy calculations: how much modern firepower 
>> would be just enough to turn the odds in a classic battle? At 
>> Thermopilae, I think two Vickers with enough ammo would have been just 
>> about enough. Also at the Lord of the Rings 2 night castle defense, 
>> one machine gun would have sufficed (better protection and fewer 
>> assailants).
>>
>>
>> Andrei
> 
> You don't have to look far back to see many examples of superior 
> technology burying a far more powerful foe. For example, there are 
> several cases where a handful of stringbag airplanes sank capital 
> battleships.
> 
> Stirling's "Island in the Sea of Time" is about bringing modern weapons 
> to bronze-age battlefields.

Curiously though, the Persian composite longbow was deadlier than the 
rifles used in the Napoleonic wars, so you really have to go up to WWI 
before you have a clearly superior technology in terms of raw power. The 
fundamental disadvantage being that it was so difficult to become a 
proficient longbowman, whereas you can train someone to be dangerous 
with a rifle in a few weeks.
(Kind of like asm vs VB, I reckon).