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.
