Re: [MBZ] OT The next IT revolution: System Oriented Programming?
There is nothing wrong with Microsoft that a massive EMP strike could not fix in .0008 nano seconds. Perhaps, then it could be replaced with something that actually worked well and was not designed on bloated code that is based on work stolen, and then claimed as "new and better", but in practical fact is a rework of an earlier rework, to cure reworks that didn't work.. Too harsh? Perhaps. However, how long has it been since you have seen any truly original thinking and invention? On Wed, Feb 24, 2021 at 9:27 PM Peter Frederick via Mercedes < mercedes@okiebenz.com> wrote: > Actually, what Gates bought was a technical reference clone of CPM (by > Digital Research) modified to run on a 16 bit 8080 chip. Seattle > Computing? Dont' remember the company, and I believe the guy who did the > (illegal) clone is now dead. Flat-out copyright infringement that the > Reagan administration refused to do anything about, and the founder of > Digital Research wasn't interested in computer stuff at the time. > > That is why when DR released DR-DOS with a copyright date of 1976 in the > early 90's Billy couldn't sue them -- it was, after all, their software. > Ran like a scalded rabbit and was vastly more stable, but Windows ate it. > > IBM management wasn't interested in the PC, just mainframes and terminals > running VMS or something similar -- this was also the about the time they > got out of hardware and drifted off into the has-been company they are > today. > ___ > http://www.okiebenz.com > > To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ > > To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: > http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com > > ___ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
Re: [MBZ] OT The next IT revolution: System Oriented Programming?
Actually, what Gates bought was a technical reference clone of CPM (by Digital Research) modified to run on a 16 bit 8080 chip. Seattle Computing? Dont' remember the company, and I believe the guy who did the (illegal) clone is now dead. Flat-out copyright infringement that the Reagan administration refused to do anything about, and the founder of Digital Research wasn't interested in computer stuff at the time. That is why when DR released DR-DOS with a copyright date of 1976 in the early 90's Billy couldn't sue them -- it was, after all, their software. Ran like a scalded rabbit and was vastly more stable, but Windows ate it. IBM management wasn't interested in the PC, just mainframes and terminals running VMS or something similar -- this was also the about the time they got out of hardware and drifted off into the has-been company they are today. ___ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
Re: [MBZ] OT The next IT revolution: System Oriented Programming?
> The problem was that traditionally spending a bunch of time optimizing code > was wasted time because you could just wait for the hardware to get faster... They always said that, but you don't have to spend much time optimizing to get the 10x benefits. It's getting that last 10% out that really takes the time. Run a few profiling tools and you can find some really easy fruit. Get rid of the bubble sorts, write down intermediate results so you don't have to go back and recalculate them 10 times, etc. -- Jim ___ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
Re: [MBZ] OT The next IT revolution: System Oriented Programming?
MS was notorious for rather poor code, on the whole. Excel was their first best-in-class product, if I recall. It came along rather late. MS specialized in 'good enough', but quickly, and high priced. Get there first, don't (quite) get thrown out the door due to shoddy workmanship, and sweep up all the easy money, leaving somewhat sterile ground for your competition to grow in. That's MS's forte. > I never did understand how using programming space to write the complex > operations of CISC processors was any faster by using a RISC system, unless > the CISC chip was from Intel and took half an hour to change stacks or > something. Off-loading the complex operations onto the programmer is going > to cause more trouble (and errors) than complex instructions executed in > hardware on the chip, especially task switching. RISC was _all_ about putting the smarts in the compiler, and not in the hardware. By making the hardware simpler it could be made faster. The theory was that it was more faster than the more instructions it took to get there. It was easier at the time to scale RAM for greater density than to scale hardware for greater speed. It was not a wrong decision. Programs got a bit fatter, but what _really_ bloated things up was all the A/V code that was showing up at around the same time. That effect completely swamped RISC bloat. The only thing keeping it real, so to speak, is battery-operated equipment. Apple's choice of the ARM for the Newton was all about the MIPS/mW rating of the ARM, which kicked everything else's ass. -- Jim ___ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
Re: [MBZ] OT The next IT revolution: System Oriented Programming?
> As I recall the story, a bastard-child division of IBM decided to produce > the PC using CPM for the disk operating system. But the folks that owned > CPM saw all those Big Blue dollar signs and got greedy. The story is well-known. Gary Kildall (only owner of CP/M) thought the day was too good for flying and blew off the meeting. The IBM guys then went on to their next stop, in Redmond, and the rest is history. Yes, the DOS was not owned nor developed my MS, it was bought for cheap-cheap-cheap from a guy who worked at Seattle Computer Products, and pushed out the door in a hurry. Gates is a sharp businessman, not a technologist. He would have done just as well in the railroad era. -- Jim ___ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
Re: [MBZ] OT The next IT revolution: System Oriented Programming?
As I recall the story, a bastard-child division of IBM decided to produce the PC using CPM for the disk operating system. But the folks that owned CPM saw all those Big Blue dollar signs and got greedy. In the meantime, Bill Gates had observed a demonstration of a disk operating system (forgot the original developer). Gates pitched "his" DOS (which wasn't his) to IBM, undercutting CPM, and IBM bought it. Gates, of course, had to scurry to buy the rights to that DOS from the original developer (probably with no mention of IBM) and renamed it MS-DOS. A 1999 TV movie "Pirates of Silicon Valley" presumably tells the story. ___ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
Re: [MBZ] OT The next IT revolution: System Oriented Programming?
If you looked at the actual machine code all those many years ago when I was doing some piddly programming in C+, until it was optimized it was full of dead space filled with no-op opcodes (do nothing, skip to the next opcode) since the programming language set aside large amounts of data space for all variables. Microsoft programs in those days were notorious for size for this reason, very poorly optimized, and as a result dead slow since the processor spent most of it's time loading no-ops. Almost as stupid as the sequence so often found of "mask interupts" followed by "halt processor" that none of their programming languages filtered out. That sequence turns off the mouse and keyboard and stops the processor, only recourse is to power cycle to reboot. The theory was, like "reduced instruction set" processors, that it used fewer clock cycles to execute an endless string of no-ops than it took to write decent code that ran far fewer instructions. Sloppy programming at the very best, digital malpractice is more like it. I never did understand how using programming space to write the complex operations of CISC processors was any faster by using a RISC system, unless the CISC chip was from Intel and took half an hour to change stacks or something. Off-loading the complex operations onto the programmer is going to cause more trouble (and errors) than complex instructions executed in hardware on the chip, especially task switching. I'm not sure Microsoft ever did figure that one out, they had to buy Unix instead. ___ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
Re: [MBZ] OT The next IT revolution: System Oriented Programming?
>systems originally written for 8 bit processors (thank you Microsoft) >, if you remember the Millenium Bug scare (another product of Microsoft, by >the way, the issue was known in 1970 by the mainframe people and fixed), If nothing else, you now understand why I am sceptical of ANYTHING Bill Gates is pushing. From wannabe programmer, to wanna be virologist, just say "NO". Rick ___ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
Re: [MBZ] OT The next IT revolution: System Oriented Programming?
Silicon reached it's speed limit more than a decade ago, and multi-core processors are limited by the overhead of managing tasks -- at some point the time needed to distribute and collect the processing threads is more than running them consecutively. I have also come to the conclusion that most IT people know little or nothing about computing, it's all software applications. I'm currently dealing with IT people who persistently confuse a database with a spreadsheet and insist on trying to manage data with Excel. Drives me crazy. I don't know what the teach in computer courses these days, but it's not what it needs to be in most cases. I have a buddy who went to a local private college, and had to write an OS for a simple computer, but he was an engineering student, not a computer science student! All his programming classes were about how to use high level languages, not anything nuts and bolts. ___ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
Re: [MBZ] OT The next IT revolution: System Oriented Programming?
More to the point, it's too complicated to write much of anything in machine code anymore, due to the graphical interface, touch screen environment (plus all the bloatware). Software is orders of magnitude more complicated and difficult than hardware, and we are stuck for the foreseeable future with systems originally written for 8 bit processors (thank you Microsoft). Until we wean ourselves off the "easy to use what was there before" way of thinking we aren't going to take advantage of the computing equipment we have. I don't see any real alternative to silicon for mass production, nor do I see a real need for much more computing power. In fact, we probably need a lot less. For instance, if you remember the Millenium Bug scare (another product of Microsoft, by the way, the issue was known in 1970 by the mainframe people and fixed), the guys at the power plant down the road a bit I was doing some work for laughed -- the plant was all analog, no issue with the date at all since none of the equipment was aware of the date. Also proof from anyone hacking into the grid control as it was all electromechanical and to make it work different had to be physically changed. Digital controls can be grossly over-used and appreciated -- I'm quite certain the mechanical computer in my 1962 Oldsmobile transmission did as good a job of controlling upshifts as the modern computerized crap does, and those old hydromechanical computers almost never failed short of a spring breaking. And if it did, it was easy to fix ___ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
Re: [MBZ] OT The next IT revolution: System Oriented Programming?
Mostly BS by a guy trying to sell something. He's right about a few things, many modern systems are more complicated and bloated than they need to be -- precicsely because people buy into the sort of fad architectures that he himself is selling. Read "No Silver Bullet" essay by Fred Brooks. Allan ___ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
Re: [MBZ] OT The next IT revolution: System Oriented Programming?
I listen to the "Retro Computing Roundtable", some time ago in one of their discussions they referenced the idea that optimizing code would improve the speed of an application some ridiculous amount, like 10x or more. The problem was that traditionally spending a bunch of time optimizing code was wasted time because you could just wait for the hardware to get faster... The article Max referenced originally is very difficult to read. I'm hoping its either AI generated or is translated from some other language... -Curt On Wednesday, February 24, 2021, 12:08:44 PM EST, Jim Cathey via Mercedes wrote: Silicon computing has reached a plateau. They can continue to multi-core things, but software cannot be multi-cored easily, or very thoroughly. The current performance limit IS software efficiency. Current high-end desktop hardware would be able to serve thousands of users simultaneously, IF the software (and, more importantly, expectations) were written as efficiently as it was in the 1970's. It is not. Most emphatically not. Nobody being trained today even has a clue as to how the machine actually works inside. They think Python is 'low level'. _Interpreted_ Python, for cryin' out loud... Or, once upon a time a Finance department would be using custom-written database software. Now, however, they all spend their days e-mailing Excel spreadsheets to each other, and flanging up macros to try to do some custom reporting. Bleh. Once upon a time, if one needed to, say, add up a large column of numbers stored in a text file one would write a simple program (C, BASIC, etc.) to do this. Fast to write, and fast to execute. NOW, nobody would do anything else but throw Excel at it. Maybe find out that the size of the file was more than Excel could handle, and then try chopping it up into multiple excel files, and ganging those results together... There is vast performance potential to be had by mining the software shitheap. Whether it will get done or not... -- Jim ___ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com ___ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
Re: [MBZ] OT The next IT revolution: System Oriented Programming?
Silicon computing has reached a plateau. They can continue to multi-core things, but software cannot be multi-cored easily, or very thoroughly. The current performance limit IS software efficiency. Current high-end desktop hardware would be able to serve thousands of users simultaneously, IF the software (and, more importantly, expectations) were written as efficiently as it was in the 1970's. It is not. Most emphatically not. Nobody being trained today even has a clue as to how the machine actually works inside. They think Python is 'low level'. _Interpreted_ Python, for cryin' out loud... Or, once upon a time a Finance department would be using custom-written database software. Now, however, they all spend their days e-mailing Excel spreadsheets to each other, and flanging up macros to try to do some custom reporting. Bleh. Once upon a time, if one needed to, say, add up a large column of numbers stored in a text file one would write a simple program (C, BASIC, etc.) to do this. Fast to write, and fast to execute. NOW, nobody would do anything else but throw Excel at it. Maybe find out that the size of the file was more than Excel could handle, and then try chopping it up into multiple excel files, and ganging those results together... There is vast performance potential to be had by mining the software shitheap. Whether it will get done or not... -- Jim ___ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
[MBZ] OT The next IT revolution: System Oriented Programming?
Dan and others in the IT field, Is this a thing? https://www.softwarebusinessgrowth.com/doc/end-of-silicon-era-is-at-hand-software-about-to-change-in-big-way-0001 By Jay Valentine, ContingencySales.com Moore’s Law means hardware gets about twice as fast every 24 months as chips can have smaller footprints. We are reaching the end of silicon-based efficiency because the laws of physics mean the etching on chips cannot get all that much smaller. Some say the age of quantum computing lies ahead. Probably for some scientific apps or weather forecasting, but for business computing, quantum computers are not going to be a big seller any time soon. Applications would have to be rewritten in code for which there are few if any programmers. Quantum computers are not the next big thing. Highly efficient, optimized software stacks are the future. And that future is at hand! Software, particularly the DevOps movement, has been the lazy uncle in this equation for over a generation. Software has not had a major architectural innovation impacting speed or efficiency – ever. Software tagged along with faster hardware, cheaper processors hiding the inefficiency of its bloat. A typical tech stack from the hardware up has a data management layer, middleware, virtualization, security, app code, a user interface. Each layer is general purpose. That means every layer has every conceivable feature, 95% of which no one customer needs. But they remain and must be supported. Each layer introduces I/O wait states. Every I/O wait state means the CPU is wasting time not doing anything productive; the application is flailing. A flailing app eats up energy and compute resources, with no productive business outcome. Software engineers once delivered purpose-built apps based on knowledge of how a CPU works. They wrote applications that pipelined data in its most efficient form. Today’s software is too expensive to license, too difficult to maintain, and too slow to offer anything close to business agility. Then there are the secondary inefficient software costs: data centers sprawl to cover entire city blocks and consume what is estimated to be 3% - 5% of the energy grid. Eliminating or reducing the data center footprint is now the largest energy-saving opportunity for a major corporation. As the need to conserve power increases, firms will pay more attention to lowering the energy footprint of those data centers. The best option at hand to reduce those costs and save energy is to dramatically increase the efficiency of software. That efficiency, measured in elimination of I/O wait states thus optimizing the processors, is fast becoming the domain of System Oriented Programming. System Oriented Programming is the next step up from microservices. A microservice makes code reusable, cuts programming time, takes advantage of containers, yet runs with pretty much the same efficiency as the technology it replaced. System Oriented Programming delivers a micro APP. That app has built in the full tech stack it needs to operate. The data management, middleware, security, and even GUI are purpose-built for that micro-app. If the micro app needs to manage cell call billing, its data management understands how cell phones generate transactions. If it needs to manage an electric meter with unique types of data feeds, that comes as part of the data management layer. The result is efficient use of the machine processor. Reducing I/O wait states makes a micro app run 1,000 to a million times faster. That’s a pretty good result if you are looking for transformation. System Oriented Programming is a difference of kind instead of just a degree. The micro-app costs 1/10th the cost of an app using traditional technology. It uses 85% less storage. It can be built from scratch in a quarter. One of the most common ways to introduce System Oriented Programming is to build a parallel app for a QA process. One can take a typical billing system, build a parallel app in a quarter, watch it run 1,000 times faster, use it as a QA checker for every transaction, then after a month, a year, or several years eliminate the legacy app and reap the benefits. System Oriented Programming offers a means of dramatically reducing data center footprints by replacing entire rooms of servers with a single IBM Z Platform or a wall of inexpensive Intel NUCS. Energy reduction, greenhouse gas reduction, cost reduction, and increased business agility – these are all readily achievable with increased software efficiency provided by System Oriented Programming. - Max Charleston SC ___ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
