Re: [NTLK] OT (No Date: Wed, 16 May 2007 09:50:52 -0400

From: matthiasm <mm_at_matthiasm.com>
Date: Wed May 16 2007 - 11:43:06 EDT

On May 16, 2007, at 5:20 PM, Dan wrote:

> On 5/16/2007 9:49 AM, Matt Howe wrote:
> *snip*
>> trainer for programming. You have to write compact efficient code
>> when you
>> only have 2Kb of memory for both the application and the screen
>> memory.
>>
> Yes indeed. Something that programmers don't even consider these
> days.
> It is still possible to create tight efficient code (I have seen
> graphical demos that are positively amazing and still only 64k!). But
> as I said, sadly no one does. So the bloat is upon us.

Um, there are still a bunch of us out there (I started with my self-
soldered CP/M machine quite a while ago (1979 IIRC), and I still do
some uController stuff, where I am limited to 300 bytes of RAM
sometimes - still enough to generate video output and other fun things).

But compact code tends to confuse users. I co-wrote a very complex
and specialized painting software, worth several thousands of $$)
which was originally installed by simply copying a small directory of
some modules from a zip archive. All written from scratch, zero bloat
(only a few MBytes), and ultrafast. But clients often called, asking
for the missing parts. They expected a lengthy installation procedure
with many dialog boxes to answer.

We then wrote an installer, but installation was done in less than
five seconds and didn't require a reboot, so we kept getting calls
from MSWindows users who were concerned that nothing installed at all.

In the end, we slowed down the installation process using a few Sleep
() instructions and a crawling "progress" dialog. It now takes about
a minute to install, mostly doing nothing. We never received a single
call again... .

Matthias

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Received on Wed May 16 12:15:03 2007

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