On 10/02/07, Eli Marmor <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Amos Shapira wrote: > Keep an eye for Andy S. Tannenbaum's keynote at LCA this morning on > http://lca2007.linux.org.au/Programme#head-6af3ad9cefbbb05127e86c3d2f00c2542a1bb75e > (I'm sure the slides/audio/video will show up later). He talks > exactly about this - how his PDP-11 with 64kb RAM used to boot in 4 > seconds while his top-of-the-line Xeon server takes two minutes to > boot, or how a VAX shared among 80 users and with 1 Mb of ram gave > good service to all of them. Maybe I'm looking young, but I'm old enough to have the (great) experience to administer (in my past as a child) such a PDP-11 (model 34 with 128KB and 12 terminals). Everything worked great and fast. And you never had to wait for the computer, even when there were 12 simultaneous users. Since that computer served a school, the total number of users was higher (about 60), and the operating system was not small, so we had to upgrade our 5MB RL01 disk to 10MB RL02 disk. The programs were tiny so their quality was near-perfect. And even in the rare case of a bug, it was a piece of cake to debug, not only because the programs were smaller and easier, but also because they were "flowchart-based" and not "event-based" (with a huge mainloop that serves everything, a model that is main responsible for the spaghetti look of today's code). The programs were also friendlier, because all the options in the (limited) UI/menus/etc were textual, in simple English, and not graphical icons that you must be a genious to guess what the programmer meant. If icons were really friendlier than text, it could be useful in other fields of life; For example, instead of speaking to each other, we could use pantomime. Fortunately, nobody is so cruel to force the people to communicate in pictures (except for UI "experts" who force the programmers to over-use graphics).
I have clear explanation for what has happened since then, but I don't
want to enter flaming wars.
Sharing your wish to avoid flame wars (I'm not even sure why you raised that issue), and with respect, I would like to offer a couple of points about your arguments: 1. Comparing single-user, text-only programs and mostly un-networked time-sharing systems of 70's/80's to the current software is like comparing apples to oranges. The PDP-11 system only had to deal with that much users who can connect to it over 9600 baud RS-232 and which have only local data to deal with, while today's desktops (trying to keep the comparision valid, so I'll leave servers out of this) have to deal with users who have multimedia and networked needs, multi-language (can you imagine anyone in your house besides you being able to use the affore-mentioned PDP-11 as they use today's systems? OR for that matter - could you do on that PDP-11 system the same things you yourself do with your home desktop today?). Therefore the software has a much more complex task to handle. Therefore it is excusable that the software will be much more complex. An analogy might be comparing Walmart (the world's largest retail store) to the local grocery store - the grocery store might be more efficient, but it might not be able to provide all the needs of its customers. There Although I stated above that there is a good excuse for today's software to be more complex, I'm NOT defending GNOME's current bloat. Maybe a good reference would be GNOME/KDE vs. Enlightenment ( http://lca2007.linux.org.au/talk/101). Just from reading his slides, it looks like he manages to demonstrate a comparable user interface to GNOME's/KDE's with a much lower CPU and memory signature (I'm aware that E by itself doesn't provide all the features that the full GNOME package provides, but in those that it does provide (terminal, sound, WM) it does it using much less resources). And this seems to be his main focus - EFFICIENT graphics user interface. 2. The issue of icons - I disagre that icons are stupid. Yes, there are many which you have to guess at but: a. I wouldn't want to imagine my toolbar (currently XFCE 4 panel) with all the tools on it being represented by text instead of simple symbols, same with OO and FF toolbar buttons. Maybe some programs took this a bit too far but in general it's a very effective way to help find the button you want and conserve screen real estate. b. Icons are used daily everywere, not just on computers - just take a walk down the street and see that almost none of traffic signs has text in them (and even those with numbers have different meaning for the numbers depending on color/shape of the sign). In Israel it might be even more relevant because there is a high percentage of immigrants who can't read Hebrew properly. In Australia, where there are many text-based signs, I heard about one suburb where Vietnamesse residents asked the council to put signs in Vietnamesse for the benfit of the residents who can't speak the local language - English. Traffic signs are not the only thing - You'll recognize almost any famous brand by seeing their familiar logo, or sometimes even a familiar font or color scheme. Imagine having to walk the isles of your supermarket if all the products of the various companies where all in plain white boxes with text on them - how would that make you feel? (I saw a good TV ad for the advertisement industry which demonstrated this). Cheers, --Amos
