12 Jun
2013
12 Jun
'13
5:20 p.m.
> [...] me to write Unix software for you, insisting
that I must only
> use a ratty old Pentium 4 with 512MB of RAM running a locked-down
> Windows XP that won't even let me install [...] is not acceptable.
BUT, until you DO, you don't have any idea how
your code performs for
those who are forced to USE it in such an environment.
While I think your general point is valid, I have trouble imagining
caring how "Unix software" performs on Windows of any stripe, on any
hardware.
A developer who "requires" better than a
ratty old Pentium 4 with
512M of RAM running a locked-down copy of Windows XP" writes software
that does not perform acceptably for those conditions.
May or may not. There are lots of cases where the development
environment is expected to be substantially beefier than the use
environment, and in many of them, there's nothing wrong with that.
I've written code to run on an 8051; I didn't actually do the
development on an 8051, and would consider anyone who did to be
completely bonkers. I once did some Android development; doing a
rebuild of the system called for a much bigger-and-faster system than
the phone which was the target platform. (Yes, we were rebuilding all
of Android on occasion; this was not just all-above-the-shiny app
development.)
If I am in a position of having to use such a machine,
then how
satisfied am I likely to be with software written on a better
machine, and NEVER REALLY TESTED on a machine like mine?
Now now. Just because it was written on a beefier machine doesn't mean
it wasn't tested on its target environment. That 8051 code was tested
on 8051s, not on the machine I wrote it on. The Android code was
tested on the target hardware.
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