scott wrote:

> If you're referring to your Amiga, then it was the same with my Acorn.  
> But those machines were orders of magnitude less complex than a PC today.

So what you're saying is that if hardware is complicated, it is 
impossible to develop quality software?

>> I don't really see how the software M$ writes is any "bigger" or "more 
>> complex" than what existed before.
> 
> Ha.  Compare what Windows XP does with your Amiga OS.  Think about 
> hardware support, multi-processor support, multi-user support, 
> multi-APIs for everything, wireless networking, and a million other things.

Why do we *need* multi-APIs for everything in the first place?

Leaving aside hardware [bad drivers can screw up any OS], what does 
Windoze actually do that AmigaDOS doesn't? Well, let's see now. It has 
networking. It's multi-user and has access permissions. It... uh... no, 
I'm struggling to think of anything else new it has. That seems to be 
able it, really. (Unless you count IE as part of the OS.)

>> I've also seen software that's much more reliable. *cough* POV-Ray. 
>> When was the last time you saw it crash?
> 
> Apart from the beta, haven't seen it crash - but often it shows weird 
> results or fails to parse.  And if such a relatively small program such 
> as POV with a tiny user-base has bugs, then I think MS has done pretty 
> well with Windows.

I've seen it crash. I discovered that in some version or other, calling 
exp() with a suitably large argument causes POV-Ray to instantly shut 
down. This has since been fixed.

Almost all software possesses something you could describe as a "bug". 
The point is, some bugs are more serious than others. Where I work, Word 
is constantly crashing. The hours we've wasted because Word has crashed 
and eaten somebody's work... I don't hear any stories of POV-Ray 
crashing half way through a million-hour render.

>> Similarly, have you *ever* seen Linux crash? [A huge number of Linux 
>> applications are hopelessly buggy, but the OS itself seems rock-steady 
>> as far as I can tell.]
> 
> When was the last time you saw XP itself crash?  I know I can't remember 
> the last time (and I use it regularly on 4 different machines with very 
> different hardware), apart from when there was faulty hardware.

Interesting. When I got my laptop, it crashed within 14 *seconds* of 
being turned on.

I will say this: As time has gone on, that laptop has crashed less and 
less. So M$ are at least making some kind of positive difference.

But even so, here at work I look after a large cluster of PCs. And 
usually in any given week at least one of them will give be a BSOD. 
Indeed, just this weekend, one of the servers rebooted itself due to one...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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