Hello J.R.; If you're using "load a word processing file" as a rough benchmark, I could see your impression of lack of speedup. That concept has become heavyweight over the years, probably overtaking Moore's law. for something closer to the math, like:
+/?#!10000 I suspect things have improved. Software bloat will continue to be with us. I'm sure the feature of mapping a nested array onto a spreadsheet screen will be part of that. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ |\/| 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/ -----------------------------------------------------(INTP)----{ gnat }- ----- Original Message ----- From: "John Randall" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "General forum" <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, June 10, 2006 10:22 PM Subject: Re: [Jgeneral] spreadsheets > Randy MacDonald wrote: > > 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: > > Of course today's computers are faster, and we expect them to do more. I > am arguing that the increase in computational resources (processor speed, > memory, disk size) has not been matched by software performance. This is > especially true with programs such as word processors, where the I/O speed > is glacial. > > Let's look at a comparison from the late 1980s. I had an AT&T Unix PC > (PC7300, 3b1) with 1MB memory, a 20MB disk and a 68010 at 10MHz. My > current computer running Linux has 1000x more memory, 5000x more disk and > is 500x as fast. The Unix PC ran a full version of Unix System V with a > graphical interface (but not X-Windows). I would not go back, but I do not > think the performance of my current computer is 500x better. > > 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
