On Thu, Oct 04, 2012 at 09:01:14AM -0400, John Clark wrote: > > Yes, so a human can jump directly from the tangled mess of DOS to a clean > streamlined operating system like LINUX, but Evolution can only add even > more tangled bells and whistles to DOS. > > John K Clark >
Actually, one could argue with this analogy. Linux bears no ancestral relationship with DOS - rather it is descended (in some sense) from Unix, so bears a lot of cruft from that OS (admittedly less than the Windows camp, which descended from DOS). Windows is arguably a lot of additional tangled bells and whistles on top of DOS - anyone programming to the Win32 API sees this. Linux had less of a requirement to be backward compatible, so is relatively cleaner, but there is still a lot of cruft - take a look at some of the obsoleted system calls that are still supported to allow old software to compile. Both are examples of evolutionary design than revolutionary design, as it were. Another example is the design of x86_64 processors by Intel. It is debatable whether anything _really_ complex could be designed by means other than evolution. I have worked on 3 projects now in the many 100K LOC size (approaching 1M LOC) class. All of these have "stupid" design features that are now locked in because it is too expensive to simply start over. Now, back to the main programme. Cheers. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics hpco...@hpcoders.com.au University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
