On Jul 21, 2010, at 3:39 PM, Bruce Johnson wrote:
On Jul 21, 2010, at 12:32 PM, James Therrault wrote:
The faster machines become along with huge amounts of RAM, the
sloppier code gets.
A common claim, but not really backed up by evidence... modern
computers do a LOT more. Yes it lets people get away without hand-
writing highly-optimized machine code for time-critical elements of
a program under severe memory and cpu constraints, but on the other
hand, stuff like Photoshop CS5's magic "Remove Trotsky" Content-
aware fill tool is just not possible writing that kind of code.
You NEED more code to do the things we ask our computers to do.
I remember my first computer, a Commodore 64 would run a full
featured flight simulator with only 41K available RAM.
Really? Full Featured? Can it import DEM files for accurate terrain
portrayal? 3D accurate city models, with textures so you can fly
around the Empire State Building if you want? Did it let you define
the flight envelope of the simulated plane? How accurate was the
aerodynamic model? Did the FAA let you use it for certifiable
training purposes (As it does for some modern flight sims?)
Go run it, then go run X-plane on a modern system. You can set it
up to race BD-5's (or F-22's, for that matter) through the Grand
Canyon if you want...<http://www.x-plane.com/>
We often have a lot of nostalgia for the 'olden days' without a lot
of regard for how amazingly far we've come.
I had an opportunity to watch Pixar's "Tin Toy" again not too long
ago. I remember being utterly blown away with how GOOD it looked
when it first came out (and I wasn't the only one...it DID win a
technical Oscar).
I was more than a little shocked at how crude it looks today. There
are scenes in it where the baby's clothes buckle into his body, and
places where his legs fold unnaturally as he moves, and there's a
distinct disconnect between the baby's movements and his actual
locomotion along the floor in several places. ALL the surfaces have
simple specular reflections, so everything looks like it's molded
out of plastic.
And this was done by the best pros in the business at the time.
You're quibbling over apples 'n oranges. That little flight
simulator on the C-64 if written today due to loose code.
My neighbor, (recently retired), was in the programming biz for over
thirty-five years and he relates that some of today's code
(slopiness) is largely responsible for many of the ills we suffer in
computerland. In fact, he is of the opinion that most of today's wiz
kids wouldn't be able to equal the efficiency of that little C-64
program.
Oh, and you could get a bunch of different scene layouts on 5 1/4"
floppy disks.
JT
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