Re^2: (OT): 200-year software

Husker++. I really like the "world as an invarient OS". One additional thought came to mind as I read that.

When "bricks" were made by hand, whether they were the individual blocks in the pyramids 4500 years ago, or those that went into the Great Wall of China. Construction took a very long time.

Modern bricks are machine made. Construction is much quicker.

The software industry is still very young. We still haven't worked out how to make our bricks by machine.

The electronics industry is just a few years older, but is considerably further along the evolutionary path. From hand blow valves; through individually soldered transistors; discrete ICs; large scale, then very large scale integration.

Assembler / C ~= transitors
C++ / Java / Smalltalk ~= discrete ICs
(Elements of) Perl SQL (others?) ~= LSI
??? => VLSI

Still a ways to go yet.

Unfortunately, we are still making the tools we use to build our programs, by hand. We need to get over the hump to the point where we can use tools to build our tools.

Examine what is said, not who speaks.

"Efficiency is intelligent laziness." -David Dunham
"Think for yourself!" - Abigail
"Memory, processor, disk in that order on the hardware side. Algorithm, algoritm, algorithm on the code side." - tachyon

Comment on Re^2: (OT): 200-year software

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Re^3: (OT): 200-year software by Theo (Priest) on Jul 15, 2004 at 22:35 UTC
We need to get over the hump to the point where we can use tools to build our tools. One of the main problems here is that software evolves so fast, that tools based on languages in use today, are nearly worthless very quickly. If there were a very good tool for creating complex software, but it was based on Cobol, very few programmers would use it. Even so, if someone could create such a software "brick maker" it might extend the life of the language used to build it. -Theo- (so many nodes and so little time ... )	[reply]
Re^4: (OT): 200-year software by Solo (Deacon) on Jul 16, 2004 at 03:19 UTC
I know many a paralegal who is absolutely satisfied with WordPerfect 5 on an i386 (repaired several times over in most cases). I'm not convinced that it's the evolution of software or hardware that prevents stabilization or longevity of applications. Rather, it's end-user/consumer's evolving expectations that are driving the phenomena. How has the end-user's expectation of a brick changed in the last 2500 years? --Solo -- You said you wanted to be around when I made a mistake; well, this could be it, sweetheart.	[reply]
Re^5: (OT): 200-year software by ggg (Scribe) on Jul 16, 2004 at 14:27 UTC
There's no doubbt that you are right: user expectation (and willingness to pay) drives the evolution of computer products as well as most of the economy. Your's is the explanation for Theo's observation. ggg	[reply]