Darren New wrote:
> David H. Burns wrote:
>> "I'm not smarter than a fifth grader." ;)
> 
> http://www.gamearchitect.net/Articles/SoftwareIsHard.html?dupe
> 
OK. I admit it programming is hard -- a lot harder than I imagined. It's 
much
harder than it used to be, but why? Well there's multitasking, increase 
in hardware complexity,
the internet (one has to deal with the possibility that umpteen 
advertisers are
going to send unwanted pop-ups to you machine), Microsoft updates every 15
or 20 minutes, viruses (exploiting deliberate loopholes in the Windows 
operating system),
to name a few reasons. Does this make difficult programming inevitable. 
I suppose it does;
at least it is so and little can be done about it. But I'm not 
altogether convinced that this should
make it so difficult for me programming on my own computer largely for 
my own use and not
really caring whether I'm connected to the internet all the time.

It doesn't explain why I have had so much difficulty finding 
understandable paradigms and
prototypes for WINAPI applications -- though that might be due to the 
fact that I don't have
ready access to a large library (or store) where I can thumb through the 
programming books.

All this is very educational. :)

David

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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> http://www.popsci.com/node/31716
> 
>   Btw, it really amuses me when the Moon landing conspiracy theorists make
> the point that the lunar lander computers had less computing capacity than
> a modern cellphone, like that was some kind of proof that the landings were
> impossible.

That reminds me:

Someone built a working replica of the guidance computer. Pretty neat!

http://agcreplica.outel.org/

Yeah, I remember the days of intros and such. Always cool to see how 
much they could cram into such a small executable.
-- 
~Mike

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David H. Burns wrote:
> OK. I admit it programming is hard -- a lot harder than I imagined. It's 
> much
> harder than it used to be, but why?

1) Your programs are bigger. (For example, my Linux boot partition won't 
even fit in the address space that CP/M used to allow for a disk drive.)

2) Your programs are way more complex. You're not writing to the screen and 
reading from the keyboard any more. Note that stdio programs are just as 
easy as they used to be.

3) Your programs depend on a lot more than they used to. You have all kinds 
of libraries to do all kinds of things you wouldn't have dreamed of when you 
were using an 8-bit computer. You can't port OpenGL to a Z80.

4) Most importantly: Each line of code interacts with other lines of code. 
Building 20 houses is 20 times as hard (or less) than building one house. 
Building a program 20,000 lines long is much harder than 20x the effort for 
a 1,000 line program.

> Does this make difficult programming inevitable. 

Only if you want to take advantage of it. Find an old copy of MS-DOS, boot 
it, and suddenly programming will be easy again.

> I suppose it does;
> at least it is so and little can be done about it. But I'm not 
> altogether convinced that this should
> make it so difficult for me programming on my own computer largely for 
> my own use and not
> really caring whether I'm connected to the internet all the time.

Whether you're connected to the internet is irrelevant for your own 
programs, unless you're using the internet.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

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Mike Raiford <"m[raiford]!at"@gmail.com> wrote:
> Someone built a working replica of the guidance computer. Pretty neat!
>
> http://agcreplica.outel.org/

Pfft! That's not a faithful replica: For instance, he didn't use core rope for
ROM, like the original did...

(not that I could blame that guy in any way - that type of ROM required manual
programming - *literally* >_<)

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clipka wrote:

> Pfft! That's not a faithful replica: For instance, he didn't use core rope for
> ROM, like the original did...

Yeah, he also admits to using RAM chips over core.. As well. I'm 
guessing it was quicker to use a chip that build a memory core from 
scratch ;)

> 
> (not that I could blame that guy in any way - that type of ROM required manual
> programming - *literally* >_<)
> 
> 

Heh. Bit, by bit... fun stuff.

-- 
~Mike

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Note that stdio programs are just as 
> easy as they used to be.

  Well, that depends. If your CLI program wants to eg. take advantage of
multiple processors, it will usually be a bit more complicated. (Although
some programming languages make this a bit easier.)

  A couple of decades ago multiprocessor computers were huge servers which
price started from $100k up, so for regular people it was just a dream.

  (Ok, you *could* write multithreaded CLI programs two decades ago, but
it wasn't as beneficial back then as it is nowadays.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Note that stdio programs are just as 
>> easy as they used to be.
> 
>   Well, that depends. If your CLI program wants to eg. take advantage of
> multiple processors, it will usually be a bit more complicated. (Although
> some programming languages make this a bit easier.)

True. Let's rephrase as "if you want your programs to do the same things 
they did under MS-DOS, they're just as hard to write now and no harder."

My point is that programming has gotten easier over time (such as with the 
invention of OOD, sophisticated IDEs and debuggers, etc) but the ambitions 
have grown greater.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "We'd like you to back-port all the changes in 2.0
    back to version 1.0."
   "We've done that already. We call it 2.0."

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On 07/31/09 15:27, Darren New wrote:
> Only if you want to take advantage of it. Find an old copy of MS-DOS,
> boot it, and suddenly programming will be easy again.

	Are you kidding?

	I'd love to see what happens if I boot MS-DOS on my P4 2.53 GHz. How 
will it handle my video card? RAM? I suppose that 640K thing is there, 
but what if I want to use stuff like smartdrv and access higher memory?

	Heck, the "complicated" programming of today may be easier than booting 
to DOS.

	(And yes, DOSBox is cheating).

-- 
Give a man a fish and you feed him for one day. Teach him to use the Net 
and he won't bother you for weeks.

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Neeum Zawan wrote:
> On 07/31/09 15:27, Darren New wrote:
>> Only if you want to take advantage of it. Find an old copy of MS-DOS,
>> boot it, and suddenly programming will be easy again.
> 
>     Are you kidding?
> 
>     I'd love to see what happens if I boot MS-DOS on my P4 2.53 GHz. How 
> will it handle my video card? RAM? I suppose that 640K thing is there, 
> but what if I want to use stuff like smartdrv and access higher memory?
> 
>     Heck, the "complicated" programming of today may be easier than 
> booting to DOS.
> 
>     (And yes, DOSBox is cheating).
> 

I suspect that he's kidding, but I've often though about it. Hmm... I 
may have an old copy
of DOS, if I can find it, and a computer that I wouldn't be afraid to 
try it on. I suspect it won't
boot but it may be worth a try. Finding the disk will be a long term 
project, I'll report results, if any,
eventually. But one couldn't use the high resolution graphics -- or 
could one??

Of course one can do a certain amount of "system" programming even on XP 
and
and it is much easier--and faster. Maybe I should take another look at 
that assembly programming
site I ran across a while back.;)

David :)

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Mike Raiford <"m[raiford]!at"@gmail.com> wrote:
> Yeah, he also admits to using RAM chips over core.. As well. I'm
> guessing it was quicker to use a chip that build a memory core from
> scratch ;)

Quite a deal quicker, I bet... cheaper as well I reckon (let alone that I'd have
no idea where to get some thousand tiny ferrite cores...)

(Interestingly, from all I know, core memory has never been produced with
automated machinery...)

But at least he's using wire-wrap technology. Does anyone happen to know whether
that's still in normal use these days? I heard much to my surprise that it's
more reliable than PCBs, at least when using thru-hole technology...?


> > (not that I could blame that guy in any way - that type of ROM required manual
> > programming - *literally* >_<)
> >
> >
>
> Heh. Bit, by bit... fun stuff.

Yeah. Probably makes you wish you had listened when your grandma tried to teach
you needlework...

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