One interesting development on the programming side is the popularity of interpreters. Interpreters usually have about a 1:10 performance relationship to pure in-line code. Their advantage is code density. You can cram an incredible amount of functioanlity into an interpreted object whereas inline code takes up a fair amount of memory space. Of course 'tricks' are played to improve the performance of interpreted code such as 'Just in time' optimization but still, if you've used a large Java program, and most of the Java IDEs are built almost entirely in Java, you notice quite a performance degradation unless you have a) lot's of RAM and b) a fairly powerful CPU with the latter being less important.
-Alex ----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Greater NH Linux User Group" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, August 12, 2002 9:15 PM Subject: RE: 'My favorite platform' debate (was: Rack Mount Servers) > On Mon, 12 Aug 2002, at 8:36pm, Brenda A. Bell wrote: > >> The 640 KB limit arose from the original IBM-PC design, circa 1980. > >> Since the 8086 didn't even have a memory manager, hardware needed to be > >> mapped directly into physical memory space, and IBM thought 640/384 was a > >> good place to draw the line between software and "reserved" memory. > > > > Somewhere on the Internet there's an anthology of hilarious quotes... I > > believe it was someone from IBM who said "why would anyone ever need > > more than 640K RAM in a personal computer". > > "640K should be enough for anybody" is widely attributed to Bill Gates. > Since Bill actually had nothing to do with the 640/384 boundary, I suspect > the remark is either (1) apocryphal (2) made off-hand. To put this in > perspective, at the time the IBM-PC was introduced, 64 kilobytes was seen as > a fairly good sized main memory for a home microcomputer. Ten times that > might well inspire a "should be enough" remark. > > > As much as I hate to give them credit for anything, I believe Redmond is > > greatly responsible for the kind of PC hardware we have today... Windows > > 3.1 was a hog, but people wanted it and the hardware vendors did what they > > needed to to keep up. > > I think it is more correctly described as a positive feedback loop. > Bigger software demands beefier hardware; more powerful hardware means > software can grow larger. The process reinforces itself. > > -- > Ben Scott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > | The opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do not | > | necessarily represent the views or policy of any other person, entity or | > | organization. All information is provided without warranty of any kind. | > > _______________________________________________ > gnhlug-discuss mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss > _______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
