Hello J.R.; I'd love to see examples of where today's computers seem slower than those of the 1970s. It's just not the impression I get.
------------------------------------------------------------------------ |\/| Randy A MacDonald | APL: If you can say it, it's done.. (ram) |/\| [EMAIL PROTECTED] | |\ | |If you cannot describe what you are doing BSc(Math) UNBF'83 þas a process, you don't know what you're doing. Sapere Aude | - W. E. Deming Natural Born APL'er | Demo website: http://156.34.89.50/?JGeneral -----------------------------------------------------(INTP)----{ gnat }- ----- Original Message ----- From: "John Randall" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "General forum" <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, June 10, 2006 7:44 PM Subject: Re: [Jgeneral] spreadsheets > Don Guinn wrote: > > Building a spreadsheet is still programming. It's just not procedural. > > Entering a document with markup into a word processor is also > > programming. Don't forget the old EAM machines with boards. That was > > programming too. I am still impressed by that architecture as those were > > machines with cycle times of as little as 3 hertz and could still > > outperform today's PCs with gigahertz speeds. > > > > Point taken. I think many people are more comfortable with hitting recalc > until the spreadsheet stabilizes than trying to understand how u^:_ works. > > I, too am unimpressed with the speed of current computers, especially when > they are used interactively. My first personal computer was a TRS-80 > Model III, with 16K RAM and a 2 MHz Z80. My current computer is about > 1000 times as fast and has about 50000 times as much memory. I do not see > comparable improvements in performance. In a recent post, Roy Crabtree > gave examples in the same vein. > > Texas Instruments still uses the Z80 (overclocked to 4 MHz) in its > calculators. This is a chip which has no floating point arithmetic, and > does not even have a hardware (integer) multiplication. The arguments for > sticking with this come down to the fact that it is good enough for > interactive use, TI has mature libraries, and power consumption is low. A > calculator will run for months on AA batteries. Compare this with cell > phones. > > Best wishes, > > John > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
