rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) (04/09/91)
mjr@hussar.dco.dec.com (Marcus J. Ranum) writes: ... > One fellow sent me mail in response to my earlier posting that > was very thought-provoking. I can't recall exactly what his phrase was, > but the gist of it was: > > We are running CISC software on our RISC machines. 'Twas me. My view is that software currently stands where the auto did in 1959: Tailfins and chrome are important. It doesn't matter how much it weighs, or what sort of mileage it gets, because features are what matter. Cheap, reliable transportation is anathema in today's software world. UNIX--the early Volkswagen--has somehow gotten lost. We haven't invented the Toyota yet. (I like this analogy because it makes pointed reference to who forced the US auto industry to wake up--I hope we don't need to wait for the Japanese to wake up the US software industry in the same way.) Moving back toward the RISC analogy--we keep adding stuff to software the way ever-more-exotic instructions were added to hardware in the late '70s and early '80s. We just don't stop and look to see whether anything we're adding is even useful, let alone necessary. I keep thinking (hoping, in fact) that sooner or later, when people want to start getting some real work done with today's machines, there may be some inquiry as to why all the goo is in the way. Perhaps if we need to solve problems in the short term and pretty things up later in the longer term (instead of the reverse:-), we'll be forced to look at what we can do with today's hard- ware, instead of waiting a couple years for hardware advances to bail us out. (Somehow the bail-out never quite comes...by the time a 2X hardware advance has happened, we've squandered 1.5X of it.) In one sense, I feel like this thread is wandering away from "UNIX wizards" topics...but in another sense I think it's at the very heart: We're talking about the most significant UNIX "feature"--and it's the one we've lost. -- Dick Dunn rcd@ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd Boulder, CO (303)449-2870 ...Lately it occurs to me what a long, strange trip it's been.