Nick Sabalausky wrote:
"Andrei Alexandrescu" <seewebsiteforem...@erdani.org> wrote in message
news:gj7591$2te...@digitalmars.com...
Nick Sabalausky wrote:
"Andrei Alexandrescu" <seewebsiteforem...@erdani.org> wrote in message
news:gj6mds$28i...@digitalmars.com...
Nick Sabalausky wrote:
Ah ha, there's that usual "if you go and buy a PC" catch. Which begs
the question, why would I? My existing system does everything I need it
to do perfectly fine. And since I'm not petty enough to allow anyone to
shame me into buying a new system just by calling my *current* system
"legacy", that leaves no real reason for me to buy a new one.
I agree that often there is little incentive to upgrade. In particular
incentive can be negative when it comes to Vista vs. XP.
I'm incredibly jealous of how Vista only highlights the filename (minus
suffix) when you go to rename a file. I *really* want that. But yea, that
alone isn't enough to balance out the reasons against upgrading.
[snip]
so supporting 64bit is just supporting the current technology. it's
not about fancy servers or anything like that, just supporting the
current standards. that's a minimun that should be expected from any
compiler implementation nowadays.
b) even though for now there is a compatability mode in most OSes, why
would I want to limit the performance and abilities of my PC to old
technology which is being faded away?
Even in 32-bit "legacy" mode, 64-bit systems are absurdly fast anyway.
Talk about adding insult to injury. This is a rather random statement to
make. Really, browsing the Web, writing documents, or writing emails is
all you want from a computer? I'd say, until computers are not at least
potentially capable of doing most intellectual tasks that people do,
we're not in the position to say that computers are fast enough. When
seen from that perspective, computers are absurdly slow and scarce in
resources. The human brain's capacity bypasses our largest systems by a
few orders of magnitude, and if we want to claim doing anything close,
we should at least have that capacity. But even way, way before that,
any NLP or speech recognition system that does anything interesting
needs days, weeks, or months to train on computer clusters, when it all
should run in real time. Please understand that from that perspective
the claim that computers are plenty fast and memory is plenty large is
rather shortsighted.
When a reasonably-priced computer comes around that can actually do those
sorts of things, I may very well be finally enticed to upgrade. But like
you said, as it stands right now, even the high-end stuff can't do it. So
it's really a non-issue for now.
I don't understand. This is like a reply to another thread. This anyone
would agree with. I agree that for your current computing work and
perceived needs you don't feel about upgrading your hardware. I mean,
what's really there to disagree. But that has nothing to do with the
generalizations aired before a la "64-bit systems are absurdly fast
anyway" or that there's no need for 64-bit. To write software that tackles
hard problems one really needs the fastest hardware one's budget can buy.
I can't understand what you say except in the frame that you
indiscriminately assume that everybody else has your wants and needs from
a computer (and consequently is a snob for getting a relatively fast one).
Really that's a rather... unsophisticated world view to go by. I'm even
amazed I need to spell this out.
You didn't need to spell it out, you just needed to pay more attention to
what I've said, as you appear to have misunderstood much of it. I've flat
out said a number of times by now that, yes, there are legitimate uses for
64-bit. Heck even my original post regarding 64-bit indicated as much ("What
are you writing, video editors and 3D modeling apps?"). What I *have* been
saying is that #1 **I** am not currently interested in 64-bit, and #2 I feel
there are too many people out there that only *think* they need it, and even
worse, expect that everyone else should also be jumping head-first into
64-bit just because it's there. (Note again, that in that previous sentence,
I did *not* indicate that "no one" has a need for 64-bit).
Nowhere have I ever said that 64-bit is and forever will be useless for
everyone. Please stop coloring my comments in that light.
As usual, we're in better agreement with your much more mellow
follow-ups. It's hard to not misunderstand you (ahem) when there's no
effort in qualifying the statements I've been commenting about. You have
to admit that ``Even in 32-bit "legacy" mode, 64-bit systems are
absurdly fast anyway'' is pretty much hard to misunderstand, no matter
how much attention one pays. I mean, that's not going to be implicitly
qualified with "for my needs". And particularly because it's followed by
``I mean, what's the slowest 64-bit x86 out there? A chip that's still
pretty damn fast, that's what.'' I guess if I paid attention I would've
read the "...to me" appendage. I'd say you have no case, which happens
to me rather often; what I do is to simply admit I exaggerated and move
on, even though I know deep inside that with the qualifications that I
meant and with the nuances that were lost, I was more right than wrong.
Well I'm not going to continue this asinine "but you said this"/"but I
didn't mean that" exchange as it's a waste of your time and mine, to say
nothing about that Christmas spirit.
Andrei
