prad wrote:
On April 29, 2006 02:09 am, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
The state of the art of computer science has gone (steadily?) downhill
for the last 30 (maybe 40) years.
The computers are bigger and faster, but the knowedge of what to do with
them has decayed.
There are a few pockets of resistance to the decay.
what an interesting comment!
i'm from the past - 1980s (pascal era even recall doing stuff with punch
cards) and while i am not particularly experienced with computers, i do
recall that back then things were 'harder' and you did have to know more
aspects of what you were doing. for instance, i was brought up to believe
that it was a good thing to declare your variables before using them and that
there is one way in and one way out of a loop. you don't have to do all this
anymore ... i enjoy the convenience and fluidity, but do wonder if this is a
good thing? writing precise compact code back then was not just a matter of
pride, but a necessity too.
I've been watching them try to make programming "easier" and faster for almost
thirty years. From what I have seen, good programmers are still desperately
needed and very rare. And writing GOOD code is still a slow process. Writing
crappy code has got a bit faster, maybe. However, as the expectations get
lower and lower, few really seems to care much.
i have almost settled on openbsd as 'the system' for us after trying various
linuxes and then the 3 'main' BSDs (couldn't get free and net to work the way
we wanted to on our servers). i like the simplicity of openbsd and i
especially like the fish!!
Funny, I agree completely. ;)
i do have a question about goals.
i have been told that freebsd (which ran quite well on my personal system)
strives for performance and stability. apparently, it achieves both quite
well too from what i have heard.
openbsd, on the other hand, doesn't even mention performance or stability in
its goals. (curiously, i've found on my system at least that some things seem
to work faster on openbsd than freebsd.)
so are performance and stability a bit of panacean bravado? is it possible
that all the bsds perform competitively and have similar robustness? is that
why netbsd chose to focus on being able to run even on a toaster, while
openbsd emphasized security?
Stability should "just be": The natural result of quality code.
You can tell someone who has spent too long with Windows, they are the ones
bragging about "uptime", thinking it is a wonderful and shocking thing when
you go over a year without rebooting. Uh..what was supposed to happen?
Operating systems and applications aren't supposed to crash, they are supposed
to Just Work from the time you power 'em on to the time when you shut them
down or the power goes out, or you have to relocate the machine or ...
Exceptions to this are just plain wrong, sanity would dictate that this should
just be assumed.
Or as I tell people, when I first started working in this business (1982),
when a customer's computer crashed, they brought it in for me to FIX. "Sorry,
that just happens" wasn't an acceptable answer back then. When the thing
crashed, it was broke and needed repair.
Of course, the consumer machines often went from power-on to OS prompt in 15
seconds or less (I have an Osborne 1 which I timed going from power-on to
command prompt in five seconds... booting off a floppy disk!), and power-down
was flipping the power switch. So, the idea "uptime" really didn't exist in
the consumer market...when we were done, we turned off the machine. Wouldn't
surprise me if the fact that there was no reason or desire to leave your
computer on 24x7 hid a lot of memory leaks and other problems.
As for performance, that's not a key goal of OpenBSD, but when you code things
"right" (and that IS a goal), things will work pretty well. For what most
people will do with their systems, you will need a stopwatch (or automated
timing!) to see the differences in performance between different OSs. That's
silly -- if you can't FEEL the difference, the difference doesn't matter to
the HUMANS using your system. This isn't drag racing or speed skating, a
fraction of a second in the total runtime of most tasks won't matter to anyone.
If improving security costs a bit of performance, OpenBSD views that as a fine
trade-off. If doing something RIGHT means not being the "first to market"
with a new feature, that's not the end of the world.
And then...really funny things can happen when it comes to performance...
Someone optimizes the heck out of the code, make sure it will be able to pull
every last bit of performance out of the system possible...and then they say,
"Oh, but it would be 'expedient' to incorporate binary drivers" from vendors who
don't give a rat's butt about the project's goals, or about optimizing their
product performance on anything other than (maybe) Windows. And suddenly, all
that work is now...pointless.
It's a funny thing about goals. Lots of people have 'em, few people live by
'em, or will quickly compromise them for the most trivial of things. Which
of course means, they weren't really goals at all, just sound bites.
Nick.
