Has your memory card ever worn out?

Alan Browne wrote:
On 2012-07-28 11:13 , Mxsmanic wrote:

Software vendors concentrate on development methods that produce code
quickly,
allowing them to push it out the door and earn money as soon as
possible. But
this code is massively bloated and unbelievably inefficient. Vendors
don't
care once they've sold the product, so they allow users to pay again
and again
for their careless development methods.

For once you're saying something clear, concise and true - at least
where commercial (for home and office) software applications are concerned.

OTOH, hardware is cheap (judging by how much is sold) and uses less
power while doing "more".

In the end it's "what gets done" not "how it gets done".


Well, I can give you an example, and see what you think.

We had an in-house tool written, a bit-slice assembler. We happened
to comment to the author (a co-worker), it was a little slow. We'd
start an assembler run, then head off for a coffee break.

The new version, was *100* times faster and parsed in larger chunks,
than the original quick prototype which apparently parsed a character
at a time.

Now, what would I need to spend, to get a 100x faster processor ?
The rewrite was much more cost effective, because we could no
longer take coffee breaks. The new tool (Mark II) was that fast.

For a small degree of slowdown, I'd agree that no one would care.
But if someone does a truly horrible first cut at a program,
you can't spend enough on hardware, to fix it.

Paul

Mike Rivers wrote:
Isn't this thread worn out yet?

That's never stopped a thread in the past... ;-)

--
best regards,

Neil

In article , Mxsmanic
wrote:


They are terribly inefficient. Install MS-DOS on a modern high-end PC, and
you'll see just how fast the hardware really is.

and then do what with it?

no modern software will run on ms-dos, so what you'd end up with would
be a doorstop. that makes it as inefficient as anything could possibly
be, and significantly more expensive than an actual doorstop.

The massive inefficiency of current systems is largely masked by increases in
computer speed, but that won't last forever.

which is why you see multicore processors and offloading tasks to the
gpu. there's still *plenty* of room for increasing overall speed.

Software vendors concentrate on development methods that produce code quickly,
allowing them to push it out the door and earn money as soon as possible. But
this code is massively bloated and unbelievably inefficient.

nonsense. certainly some developers ship crap, but many do not. the
ones who ship crap don't tend to last too long. many developers spend a
*lot* of time optimizing and tweaking their code so it runs as fast as
possible.

Vendors don't
care once they've sold the product, so they allow users to pay again and again
for their careless development methods.

nonsense again. if developers are careless and ship a slow and buggy
product, there won't be any users to pay again. they will have switched
to a competing product that doesn't suck, and written by a developer
who knows what they're doing.

In article , Neil Gould
wrote:

There was no difficulty in processing large images (50 meg)
because the actual image file was never loaded into RAM. And, there
were applications that worked much faster than PhotoShop, which was
a "late comer" to digital image editing.

actually it wasn't a 'latecomer' at all. before photoshop, what
existed were little more than paint programs. they were very
primitive and not particularly good.

I completely disagree with your notions about this. There were several
professional image editing applications on the market long before PhotoShop
was created.

not on low cost desktop computers, there weren't.

What do you think folks used to edit images from high-end drum
scanners?

really expensive software. photoshop might seem expensive but it's much
cheaper than what came before it.

On 2012-07-28 15:01:52 -0700, nospam said:

In article , Neil Gould
wrote:

There was no difficulty in processing large images (50 meg)
because the actual image file was never loaded into RAM. And, there
were applications that worked much faster than PhotoShop, which was
a "late comer" to digital image editing.

actually it wasn't a 'latecomer' at all. before photoshop, what
existed were little more than paint programs. they were very
primitive and not particularly good.

I completely disagree with your notions about this. There were several
professional image editing applications on the market long before PhotoShop
was created.

not on low cost desktop computers, there weren't.

What do you think folks used to edit images from high-end drum
scanners?

really expensive software. photoshop might seem expensive but it's much
cheaper than what came before it.

There was that 1973 product out of Xerox PARC, "SuperPaint". It was
built to run on a Data General Nova 800 mini. images were up to 640x480
8-bit.

http://www.rgshoup.com/prof/SuperPaint/
http://design.osu.edu/carlson/histor...nals_final.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_General_Nova

--
Regards,

Savageduck

In article 2012072818095343658-savageduck1@REMOVESPAMmecom,
Savageduck wrote:

What do you think folks used to edit images from high-end drum
scanners?

really expensive software. photoshop might seem expensive but it's much
cheaper than what came before it.

There was that 1973 product out of Xerox PARC, "SuperPaint". It was
built to run on a Data General Nova 800 mini. images were up to 640x480
8-bit.

http://www.rgshoup.com/prof/SuperPaint/
http://design.osu.edu/carlson/histor...nals_final.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_General_Nova

interesting links, but that was not really a photo editor like
photoshop is. there's no cmyk or ability to output to postscript
printers, for example. it looks more like a colour macpaint, but
certainly impressive for its time.

a far more popular app called superpaint was a macpaint/macdraw combo
from silicon beach software, released in 1986.

On 2012-07-28 18:38:05 -0700, nospam said:

In article 2012072818095343658-savageduck1@REMOVESPAMmecom,
Savageduck wrote:

What do you think folks used to edit images from high-end drum
scanners?

really expensive software. photoshop might seem expensive but it's much
cheaper than what came before it.

There was that 1973 product out of Xerox PARC, "SuperPaint". It was
built to run on a Data General Nova 800 mini. images were up to 640x480
8-bit.

http://www.rgshoup.com/prof/SuperPaint/
http://design.osu.edu/carlson/histor...nals_final.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_General_Nova

interesting links, but that was not really a photo editor like
photoshop is. there's no cmyk or ability to output to postscript
printers, for example. it looks more like a colour macpaint, but
certainly impressive for its time.

a far more popular app called superpaint was a macpaint/macdraw combo
from silicon beach software, released in 1986.

Same guys.

--
Regards,

Savageduck

In article 2012072819375827544-savageduck1@REMOVESPAMmecom,
Savageduck wrote:

There was that 1973 product out of Xerox PARC, "SuperPaint". It was
built to run on a Data General Nova 800 mini. images were up to 640x480
8-bit.

http://www.rgshoup.com/prof/SuperPaint/
http://design.osu.edu/carlson/histor...nals_final.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_General_Nova

interesting links, but that was not really a photo editor like
photoshop is. there's no cmyk or ability to output to postscript
printers, for example. it looks more like a colour macpaint, but
certainly impressive for its time.

a far more popular app called superpaint was a macpaint/macdraw combo
from silicon beach software, released in 1986.

Same guys.

uh, no. the author of silicon beach superpaint had absolutely nothing
to do with data general superpaint.

On 2012-07-28 19:49:56 -0700, nospam said:

In article 2012072819375827544-savageduck1@REMOVESPAMmecom,
Savageduck wrote:

There was that 1973 product out of Xerox PARC, "SuperPaint". It was
built to run on a Data General Nova 800 mini. images were up to 640x480
8-bit.

http://www.rgshoup.com/prof/SuperPaint/
http://design.osu.edu/carlson/histor...nals_final.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_General_Nova

interesting links, but that was not really a photo editor like
photoshop is. there's no cmyk or ability to output to postscript
printers, for example. it looks more like a colour macpaint, but
certainly impressive for its time.

a far more popular app called superpaint was a macpaint/macdraw combo
from silicon beach software, released in 1986.

Same guys.

uh, no. the author of silicon beach superpaint had absolutely nothing
to do with data general superpaint.

Aah! You are referring to the company bought by Aldus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperPaint_(Macintosh)
....and which was eventually sucked into the Adobe stable.

--
Regards,

Savageduck

In article , Mxsmanic
wrote:

and then do what with it?

Run software.

such as?

no modern software will run on ms-dos, so what you'd end up with would
be a doorstop.

Some people don't need to run modern software.

very, very few.

There are still companies out there running MS-DOS as servers.

what does a server have to do with what a user runs on his or her own
system?

which is why you see multicore processors and offloading tasks to the
gpu. there's still *plenty* of room for increasing overall speed.

It cannot increase forever.

nobody said it would.

When it stops increasing, many software vendor
business models will collapse.

some will, some won't. you'll be long dead by the time it stops
increasing.

plus, some software vendor business models collapse long before it
might stop increasing. just look at microsoft today versus 15 years
ago. they've had failure after failure and it looks like that's going
to continue.

And there are already problems, because most of
the improvements are in CPU power, but other system components are falling
increasingly far behind.

nonsense. gpus are dramatically advancing, ssd leaves hard drives in
the dust and displays are becoming very high resolution, aka 'retina
quality'.

nonsense. certainly some developers ship crap, but many do not.

Most do. It's the best way to generate lots of revenue in a short period, and
few companies worry about the long term.

nonsense. most do not. it might generate a lot of revenue quickly, but
users catch on to that bull**** and it doesn't last for very long. it's
a very bad long term business model.

the ones who ship crap don't tend to last too long. many developers spend a
*lot* of time optimizing and tweaking their code so it runs as fast as
possible.

No, they don't. Most developers enjoy writing new code, not modifying or
testing existing code. Many don't care about performance at all.

nonsense. many developers take pride in their work and don't release
****.

nonsense again. if developers are careless and ship a slow and buggy
product, there won't be any users to pay again.

Sure there will, if there's not much competition.

then it's a perfect opportunity for someone else to do a good job and
own the market for that product.

Additionally, computer users have been conditioned to accept extreme
mediocrity.

i can clearly see that, based on what you've been posting.