guy keren wrote:
because a single computer now runs not one program - but hundreads of programs. the problem with modern developers is that they tend to forget this.
I don't think developers forget this at all but I don't see how it is relevant.
and, surprisingly enough, even large C programs now tend to be complete memory hogs - see firefox/mozilla, evolution, KDE (and its hundreads of utilities), gnome, etc.
Large C programs these days do an incredible number of things. I find it funny that people complain about code bloat in open source code but then cannot point out any actual inefficiencies or bugs causing such bloat. If you think you can make the program do the same thing with less memory then please show us how. I think you will find that firefox/mozilla, evolution, kde, etc. for the most part all do something with the memory they are using. If you want less memory you will need to give up features or fancy bitmaps that make up the UI or something.
imagine how they'd look if they were written in a scripting language ;) we'll be unable to open more then one application at a time.
Actually, we might be able to make better use of shared libraries and be able to open *more* applications at a time.
And while I'm writing I want to publicly decry the use of the phrase "scripting language". It is outmoded and denigrates the languages it is used to describe. I am trying to strike it from my vocabulary. Perl/Python/Tcl are not even primarily used to "script" other programs anymore, if they ever really were. They are programming languages in their own right and distinguishing between compiled and interpreted these days is not very useful. Especially since many things are now compiled to byte code and then JIT'd or JIT'd straight from the source etc. BASIC gave interpreted languages a bad name back in the day. Lack of hardware resources gave other perfectly good languages like LISP a bad name. But now that we have abundant cpu and memory certain features like garbage collection and many of the features and abstractions that used to be a liability are saving us a lot of time and money. The balance of power as far as language features go has certainly shifted.
i'm not talking about java and dot net - with them, there's an assumption of a single-ask computer to begin with.
There is? I'm no fan of java or dot not but I understand that java is running on lots of servers with lots of tasks simultaneously.
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