3 Jun
2013
3 Jun
'13
12:43 p.m.
On Mon, 3 Jun 2013, Mouse wrote:
And that's what's wrong - well, that's one
of the things that's wrong -
with "current software". "WordStar on a 4.077MHz 8086 could keep up
4.77MHz 8088
with my typing. WinWord under Windows on a 300 MHz
Pentium II can't."
I saw that quote attributed to Seth Briedbart, of Briedbart Index fame
(though I've never verified the authenticity of the attribution).
It's also not really true; it amounts to painting all "current
software" with the same brush, which is about as false (and as true) as
any other such broad-strokes summary.
ALL generalizations are bogus.
"If you let me pidk the course, my jalopy can beat ANYTHING."
(I had to concede once on that argument. I proposed Honda 600,
up the freight elevator of Evans Hall, around the roof and back down, but
my adversary turned out to be an elevator mechanic, who pointed out that
he would have little difficulty trapping me between floors long enough for
him to disassemble his GTO and reassemble on the roof)
It all depends on your needs.
For unchanging needs, such as a grocery list, business phone log,
accounting, doing my taxes on VisiCalc (now WinExcel), etc. the new
"productivity software" does not provide improvement.
But, there are things that you can do now that weren't possible, or at
least not feasible, back then (whenever THAT was)
Such as:
A routine meeting schedule announcement with dancing kangaroos and
yodelling jellyfish, or
Image editing, or
Casual formatting that is close enough to typography for my presbyopic
eyes. Wordstar had micro-spacing for daisy wheels, but stayed
YAFIYGI, not WYSIWYG for proportional fonts until close to the very end.
Moore's "law" predicts doubling of memory and speed every 18 months.
Boyle's law predicts that software will expand faster than hardware, to
occupy all available resources, and then some.
Some "software developers" use Moore's law not as a design limit, but as a
relied upon tool - "You don't think that it's fast enopugh? Get a newer
computer! 18 MONTHS old?? I'm amazed that it would even run on something
that ancient!" ("user inadequacy" defense against performance
complaints)
Yeah, old hardware can't run new resource hogging software.
But, if the needs are stable, newer hardware can sometimes do wonders with
old software.
--
Grumpy Ol' Fred cisin at xenosoft.com