On Apr 25, 2008, at 4:01 PM, Carl Dassbach wrote:
Interesting question - is software timeless. Not really, or we
would and could be using software written for IBM machines of the
50s or CPM machines of the early 1980s. Software, whether
applications or operating systems, is to a large measure specific
to hardware. You can not run CPM on a modern computer and I doubt
if you could find a usable CPM machine today, Conversely, one of
the problems with Vista is that it requires a hefty processor and
lots of memory and so you can't even run it on early Pentium
machines. So, I would say that software isn't timeless, it is
historically and technologically specific.
By adding the qualifier "theoretically", my guess is that Doug is
suggesting that the algorithm that is embodied in the software is
timeless. So, if you were to be a purveyor of Quicksorts, its not the
PL/1 or C# implementation of it that you are selling (and shame on you
for trying to sell sort algorithms!). And Quicksort remains fairly
timeless. Another sense in which software is somewhat timeless is that
it can always be updated.
--ravi
_______________________________________________
pen-l mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
