[rescue] tired of current GUIs / a rant about the daily garbage we put up with

[Robert Toegel]

Well, I was talking about old software on old machines.  Yeah, they did
optimize it back then.  Now, you don't "need" to.  That might lead to some
lazy programming.  My older son, who is now a professor in a local college,
tries to teach programming with decent optimization and minmal,
straightforward code because he had been dealing with writing (and fixing)
code for a company for a couple of years.  From his description,
"spaghetti" code still exists.  BTW, my students were most impressed with a
graphic representation of electron waves run on an Apple IIc displayed on
an old CRT TV.  Then again, we're talking about a generation that, when a
teacher brought in a 3 1/2 inch floppy, some one exclaimed, "Wow, you 3D
printed an icon!"

Bob

On Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 09:11 Lionel Peterson <lionel4287 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Be aware when comparing different configurations:
>
> New hardware running old software;
> New hardware running new software;
> Old hardware running new software;and
> Old hardware running old software.
>
> On PCs it's common to run new software on older computers, making them seem
> slow, as seen in the older workstation 'market' (actually community) older
> software on older hardware is likely faster.
>
> Running latest software on latest hardware, no speed issues are typically
> noticeable.
>
> And the last option, older software on latest hardware is a rare
> occurrence,
> but can make the old software really fly.
>
> "Back in the day" programmers had reasons to optimize their code, but when
> the
> user-base has no issue with gigabyte software deployments, running on 6-12
> core multi-GHz machines with terabytes of storage and a couple dozen
> gigabytes
> of RAM what's the incentive?
>
> The question was raised here about minimal computing environment, I
> recently
> played with the new Raspberry Pi 4 B+, and it's quite a capable operating
> environment (running off-the-shelf Debian/Raspian OS), esp. compared to the
> previous Raspberry Pi 3 B+. The improvements in I/O channels, networking
> make
> a novelty system into a quite usable system. Do I prefer it to my i5 and i7
> laptops? No, but if I had to I could work on it without too much
> complaining.
> Of course, I'm talking about the latest 4GB model with USB 3.0 and a pretty
> capable 1 GB/sec Ethernet port along with dual band WiFi supporting a
> quad-core CPU. Only in 2019 would that be considered 'modest'...
>
> Ken, N2VIP
>
> > On Oct 23, 2019, at 14:28, Robert Toegel <rjtoegel at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I never realized it
> > until students were amazed how fast some of my old equipment was.  Of
> > course schools never got top of the line equipment anyway.
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