On 27.03.2025 12:14, bart wrote:
On 27/03/2025 02:24, Janis Papanagnou wrote:
>
I'm speaking about all that inferior systems that had a comparably
high price without a matching quality. And about years and years
passing without vendors of such products changing that situation.
I guess ... you're talking about either the IBM PC hardware or MS
software, or both? (Although PCs weren't expensive.)
Here PCs were expensive; a friend of mine bought one for ~8000 DM,
IIRC, (compare that to 2000 DM for a Commodire PET; even the first
Apple was expensive but not that expensive as the IBM PC).
[ memory demands ]
Also, by a 'few KB' I meant single figures, like 2-8KB for the code,
plus RAM. That Atari seems to have a bit more available.
Yes, I was comparing it with the "standard" IBM PC (which had 640 kB)
and the Atari ST had first (I think) 500 kB (mine, a later version,
had 1 MB).
You are right to point out that some BASIC interpreters were provided
in a ROM. I don't recall the ROM sizes of all the PCs I used back then,
but I remember the Sharp PC 1401 pocket calculator that had 40 kB ROM
for the OS with BASIC.
I've never used Basic. But it is one language I admire, even if it is
crude:
10 let a=0
20 let a=a+1
30 if a<1000000 then 20
40 print a
Okay, you "admire" BASIC (and you found the 68000 CPU "wonderful");
that tells a lot about your background and expertise.
>
In the past I had implemented an emulator for the SC 61860; if that
helps you in any way with your argument please let me know.
The argument is that even such an apparently simple processor was not as
'primitive' as you seemed to think.
You certainly have no clue at all to guess what I _think_, given that
you don't even understand what I am _saying_.
I seem to recall that elsewhere in the thread you were mentioning the
number of transistors - I understood that as if you take that being
an indication for a complexity, non-triviality, not being "primitive".
If that is a correct interpretation of your argument I'd like to
suggest considering that the number of molecules (necessary to build
up these ~8000 transistors) is even larger.
Try for a moment to understand that the quality of a CPU architecture is
not (for assembler programmers) something measured in transistors.
There's huge differences in processor _architectures_, though...
>
But also at that time - early 80s when Spectrums etc were popular -
there were some wonderful new 16/32-bit processors such as 68000,
Z8000/0 and NS32032, of which only the first survived.
If you mention 68000 and NS32032 playing in the same architectural
league then it's hard for me to consider you a serious discussion
partner.
>
I've had contact with a couple CPUs back these days; 6502 (6510),
68000, 8080 (Z80), another Intel thing where I forgot the number,
SC 61860, TMS 320 C25. And I read about (but not programmed) a
couple more (the SPARC, one from National Semiconductors) where
I forgot the model numbers.
>
The 68000, specifically, is a great example for an inferior CPU
architecture. (Your mileage obviously varies if you think it was
even "wonderful".)
OK, so what's wrong with it then? (It seemed to be adequate for that
Atari!)
It was chosen for the Atari. So what? The IBM PCs worked with Intel's
x86 series. So what? - The quality of processor architectures seem
not directly correlated to what's been used; obviously other marketing
principles dominated. - I'm not up to date with recent CPU evolutions,
but I think the sophisticated NS 32016/32 died and the 68000 survived;
from a CPU architecture perspective I consider that a crazy fact. (But
also not surprising, because the market is often driven by price and
politics and not necessarily by superior technology.)
I won't discuss the details of CPU architectures with you here; but
if you're really interested I suggest to inspect those two processors
more thoroughly - there's papers and documents available online.
[...]
>
But that all was long ago and is meaningless today.
I find I can learn a lot from how simple things were that long ago. The
early 80s was the golden age for that, getting away from mainframes and
complex OSes, to much more informal systems. Now it's worse than ever.
I'm not able two bring your two sentences together. - What is worse?
Do you mean to qualify it as: mainframe era: bad, 1980's era: good,
nowadays: bad again. - Is that what you wanted to say?
The biggest problems with mainframes might be their "costs"; in every
sense (physical size, price, energy, capacity, speed), if compared to
contemporary systems. There's certainly progress, necessary progress.
(I worked in telecom contexts where mainframes had been used and we
supported the transition to Unix systems. The original system filled
a sports hall, literally, and the result of the reorganization was a
couple machines in a corner of that hall.)
But there were also advantages compared to some later systems; I tried
(for example) to get access to the main/core memory on a CDC 175 - to
no avail, of course. That attack was no problem on the PC systems that
I used in the 1980s.
What I'd want to (positively) say is that the "good bits" of old era
should not get forgotten! - Often (it seems) they are, sadly.
It's interesting to still see advocates of inferior IT justifying
bad paragons, though.
So you have strong opinions about languages and machine architectures
and IT (whatever that is exactly).
Lets say I have some background to separate the wheat from the chaff.
("IT" means "information technology"; a common superordinate term to
not enumerate all the subareas separately. - I'm sure you know that.)
I also have strong opinions about inferior languages like C and a few
other things. They are not that welcome in a forum like this. But I am
at least in the same field: I code at the lower level and also develop a
parallel systems language.
So what? I see nothing wrong with your stance here.
But, unless I'm in excitement, I wouldn't call "C" "inferior" per se.
There's IMO good reasons to use it in many places and circumstances
(I also use it; and, just for the record, more often than Simula or
some other languages that I mentioned to have commendable properties).
The question is, what are /you/ doing here with all your lofty ideals
and sneering at everyone who isn't an academic or a 'professional'? I'm
surprised you would even deign to look at a language like C.
My "lofty ideals", as you call it, are the things I strive to. This is
maybe contrary to some other folks; I don't chime in to any advertised
hype.
WRT academic or professionalism; actually I generally don't know (or
need to know) whether someone has an academical background, or solid
practical experience, or has a well built up self-educated knowledge.
(But usually you can become quite sure about anyone's background if
you follow what discussion partners say.)
In my experience it's not the best for IT/CS professionals to reside
in an (academic) ivory tower, it's also not the best to not have some
academic background, and it's really bad if there's just IT-religious
fanatics around.
I try to share my knowledge and discuss topics to learn new things.
But at some point I can also get harsh if someone obviously lacking
even the basic CS knowledge and IT experience, and is yet constantly
insisting and re-iterating "stupid positions".
WRT me using "C"; I've answered that already above in this post. We
have the choice and (usually) the freedom to make use of it. - That
doesn't prevent me from pointing out the "good bits" of alternatives.
After all, _I_'d like things to get better. (Not an easy position.)
My impression is that the prevalent age here is maybe 55-75 (or so);
it would be bad if that concentrated experience gets lost.
Janis
Suggested method for returning a string from a C program?
Re: Suggested method for returning a string from a C program?
