Breaking backwards compatiblity

[H. S. Teoh]

On Sun, Mar 11, 2012 at 04:12:12AM -0400, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> "so" <so at so.so> wrote in message 
> news:pzghdzojddybajuguxwa at forum.dlang.org...
[...]
> > No matter how much hardware you throw at it, somehow it gets slower
> > and slower.  New hardware can't keep up with (ever increasing)
> > writing bad software.
> >
> > http://www.agner.org/optimize/blog/read.php?i=9
> >
> 
> That is a *FANTASTIC* article. Completely agree, and it's very well-written.

I really liked the point about GUIs. Many resources are used for
graphical elements that only have aesthetic value AND tends to distract
the user from actual work. IOW, you're wasting CPU, RAM, and disk time
(which comes from spending lots of hard-earned cash for that expensive
hardware upgrade) just for some silly eye-candy that has no value
whatsoever except to distract from the task at hand, that is, to
accomplish what you set out to do in the first place.

That's why I use ratpoison as my WM. Who needs title bars with fancy
colored icons, gradient shading, and *shadows*?! I mean, c'mon. You're
trying to get work done, not admire how clever the UI designers were and
how cool a color gradient is. If I wanted to admire eye-candy, I'd be
playing computer games, not working. (That said, though, I did at one
point have a Compiz installation for the sole purpose of showing off
Linux to clueless people. :-P)

Then the points about background processes, auto-updates, and boot-up
times. These are things about Windows that consistently drive me up the
wall. Background processes are all nice and good as long as they are (1)
necessary, and (2) don't do stupid things like hog your CPU or thrash
your disk every 12 seconds. But the way Windows works, every time you
install something, it insists on starting up at boot-time, incessantly
checking for auto-updates every 12 seconds, downloading crap from online
without your knowledge, and THEN pop up those intrusive, distracting,
and utterly annoying "Plz Update Meeee!" dialogs. Ugh. Everytime I see
one of those dialogs I have this urge to delete the app and expunge all
traces of it from the system with extreme prejudice.

At least on Linux you can turn off this crap and/or otherwise prevent it
from doing stupid things. But on Windows you have no choice. Attempting
to disable stuff usually breaks said apps, or affects system usability
in some way.


> That's actually one of reasons I like to *not* use higher-end
> hardware.  Every programmer in the world, no exceptions, has a natural
> tendancy to target the hardware they're developing on. If you're
> developing on high-end hardware, your software is likely to end up
> requiring high-end hardware even without your noticing. If you're
> developing on lower-end hardware, your software is going to run well
> on fucking *everything*.

True. I suppose it's a good thing at my day job that we don't get free
upgrades. Whatever was current when we first got the job is whatever we
have today. It does have a certain value to it, in that we notice how
idiotically long it takes to compile the software we're working on, and
how much CPU and RAM a particular ludicrously-long linker command-line
eats up at a certain point in the build (which, not too surprisingly, is
the linking of the GUI component). It does provide a disincentive
against doing more stupid things to make this worse.

Now if only everyone (particular the people working on the GUI component
:-P) had 5-year old development machines, perhaps that ludicrously-long
linker command would never have existed in the first place. Well, I can
dream. :-)


T

-- 
Ignorance is bliss... but only until you suffer the consequences!