If C= had produced an Amiga incompatible wonder computer would you have bought it?

[Digiman]

Oh please.  Look, I'm just as fond of memories of the Amiga as anyone else around here but Apple was years from making fashion accessory computers.  The Lisa, then later the Mac, were an attempt to put what Xerox was doing at Palo Alto on the desktop of ordinary people.  If they hadn't bothered, nobody else would have, and we'd be having this discussion in VI or some other godawful text-only medium.

Yeah, the 520 sure was a winner - that's why it ... uh, I'm sure I can think of something it did better which is why it's still around and the mac didn't last except oh wait it isn't and the mac did.

And finally: the original 128k Mac did have sound Virginia.

It's one thing to say "Man, the Amiga was a neat computer".  At the time you couldn't have convinced me I'd have the point of view I do now.  Except, you see, I grew up and can look objectively at the way things really were, not from inside the Amiga Reality Distortion Sphere where no other computers exist or if they did they were rough-edged abacuses made out of iron that delivered hepatitis and painful electrical burns when people tried to use them.

Well clearly I would love to hear about this personal/home computer better than Amiga 1000 between 84 and 87....go ahead Mr expert :roflmao: Even the 1982 C64 had advantages like longer filenames over Win PC <94

Sorry but I will take the opinion of a real expert of the time like Guy Kewney of PCW Magazine, he used and reviewed just about every machine made in the 80s and 90s.

Apple is only around today thanks to massive cash injection in shares from Gates due to potential court case over Win95....that and iBollox range.

Morgan UK still make their low tech/excessive profit/style over substance cars independently, doesn't mean they made better cars than their rivals in the 80s. Same deal with retro computer companies.

[Digiman]

Same here, emotionally it seems like a waste.  Maybe someday in the future when the exponential increases stop and software becomes more mature then the next best way to improve it will again be to optimize for speed, memory, and disk usage.

Franko - I agree with you, the extreme frugality when using computer resources was/is necessary on older systems like the Amiga.  I was just trying to defend my profession a bit to say that modern bloat isn't necessarily sloppiness but rather the result of shifting priorities that resulted from the faster hardware being available.

If the software industry had held on to the "Amiga way", we may have slightly snappier OS's and more free hard drive space now,  but there would be whole classes of applications that people currently enjoy that wouldn't be possible to write like that.  Ironically, modern 3D games would be one of those.

Bloat has always been the ethos in the corporate industry since the 80s.....write your application to achieve its core function, if it's slow buy a better box to execute it on. Until machines stop getting more powerful each successive generation this is the most economical way to do it.

[commodorejohn]

Even the 1982 C64 had advantages like longer filenames over Win PC <94

...uh, long filenames are nice, but they hardly make up for everything else kludgy and terrible about the Commodore DOS filesystem. And I say that as someone who likes the C64.

Bloat has always been the ethos in the corporate industry since the 80s.....write your application to achieve its core function, if it's slow buy a better box to execute it on. Until machines stop getting more powerful each successive generation this is the most economical way to do it.

"Most economical," maybe, but that doesn't make it good.

[Belial6]

"Most economical," maybe, but that doesn't make it good.

Frequently it does.  The application that works is more "good" than the application that doesn't work.  The application that exists genrerally works, while the application that doesn't exist does not.  Thus the application that has been written is more "good" than the one that hasn't been written.

If I can cut the development time in half by using bloated code and thus be able to write two applications instead of one, then the second one that being economical made possible is pretty much always going to be better than it would have been if we had not gone for economy.

Much of my code at work is bloated.  My team puts very little effort into optimizing on first run of applications.  Why?  Because the applications requested have 20% chance of never actually being used.  Sad, but true.  Many of the applications are requested so that the person requesting them can look like they are doing work.  We still have to write them, but they won't get used.

The other factor is that my and my teams time is worth more than the cost of buying faster computers.  Add to that that most speed slowdowns are on the user side, not the computer side.  Things like waiting for input.  Finally, the rate that new applications that get heavily used end up with so many change requests in the first year that trying to heavily optimize the code would mean that by the time the optimization has been done, it is no longer needed.

That doesn't mean that we never optimize.  We put our optimization resource to the places that will get the most bang for the buck.  At optimization time, we look first at applications that cannot scale well to meet demand.  Then we look at applications that are heavily used.  Then we look at applications that are just slow.

An application that takes the unreasonable time of 60 seconds to save a document is not going to be high on our list if it is only used twice a year for a semi-annual recording.  You can say that the application isn't "good", but it is WAY more "Good" than if it didn't exist at all, which would be more likely if heavy optimization were the requirement.

[Digiman]

...uh, long filenames are nice, but they hardly make up for everything else kludgy and terrible about the Commodore DOS filesystem. And I say that as someone who likes the C64.

"Most economical," maybe, but that doesn't make it good.

Hey, try naming 200 picture files with just 8 characters. DOS on C64 is basic sure but you can replace it......but MSDOS was stuck with 8 character files until Win95 kludge to hide.

[Belial6]

There was a kludge long before win95 for long filenames.  You just named your file as:

c:\the\weekend\that\we\spent\naked\in\the\woods\pic001.bmp

I'm not saying it was good.  Just saying it was there.

[golem]

An application that takes the unreasonable time of 60 seconds to save a document is not going to be high on our list if it is only used twice a year for a semi-annual recording.  You can say that the application isn't "good", but it is WAY more "Good" than if it didn't exist at all, which would be more likely if heavy optimization were the requirement.

I agree with what you are saying. I admire the purity of unbloated software but to optimise takes time and what is the point of doing that if the time it takes to optimise it is greater than the overall time it saves during runtime.

[Digiman]

Frequently it does.  The application that works is more "good" than the application that doesn't work.  The application that exists genrerally works, while the application that doesn't exist does not.  Thus the application that has been written is more "good" than the one that hasn't been written.

If I can cut the development time in half by using bloated code and thus be able to write two applications instead of one, then the second one that being economical made possible is pretty much always going to be better than it would have been if we had not gone for economy.

Much of my code at work is bloated.  My team puts very little effort into optimizing on first run of applications.  Why?  Because the applications requested have 20% chance of never actually being used.  Sad, but true.  Many of the applications are requested so that the person requesting them can look like they are doing work.  We still have to write them, but they won't get used.

The other factor is that my and my teams time is worth more than the cost of buying faster computers.  Add to that that most speed slowdowns are on the user side, not the computer side.  Things like waiting for input.  Finally, the rate that new applications that get heavily used end up with so many change requests in the first year that trying to heavily optimize the code would mean that by the time the optimization has been done, it is no longer needed.

That doesn't mean that we never optimize.  We put our optimization resource to the places that will get the most bang for the buck.  At optimization time, we look first at applications that cannot scale well to meet demand.  Then we look at applications that are heavily used.  Then we look at applications that are just slow.

An application that takes the unreasonable time of 60 seconds to save a document is not going to be high on our list if it is only used twice a year for a semi-annual recording.  You can say that the application isn't "good", but it is WAY more "Good" than if it didn't exist at all, which would be more likely if heavy optimization were the requirement.

Only time program code is optimized is in embedded devices or handheld devices. Otherwise its too expensive to pay for 10s or 100s of hours of programmer time if £300 gets a new CPU. Also time costs companies more...unreleased code is useless to a company.

Outrun on Amiga is an example. Licence cost a fortune and what we got was the quickest development via updating Atari ST 68k ASM source, cheap. finished quicker so can get faster return on investment.

It is crap for us yes, but business is different and profit & revenue are the only concerns for corporate entities. Being unique is as good as it gets.

[Belial6]

Only time program code is optimized is in embedded devices or handheld devices. Otherwise its too expensive to pay for 10s or 100s of hours of programmer time if £300 gets a new CPU. Also time costs companies more...unreleased code is useless to a company.

Outrun on Amiga is an example. Licence cost a fortune and what we got was the quickest development via updating Atari ST 68k ASM source, cheap. finished quicker so can get faster return on investment.

It is crap for us yes, but business is different and profit & revenue are the only concerns for corporate entities. Being unique is as good as it gets.

Not as much crap for us than if the game was never written at all because the Licensing + complete rewrite would have been more expensive than what would allow it to be written.

[Franko]

I agree with what you are saying. I admire the purity of unbloated software but to optimise takes time and what is the point of doing that if the time it takes to optimise it is greater than the overall time it saves during runtime.

That's a bit of a crazy statement to make and doesn't make the slightest bit of sense... :confused:

Of course it's going to take longer to write a piece of software & optimise it to perform a task than it is to have the programs "runtime" to perform it's task be longer or just slightly less than the time taken to write the software...

I mean say for example a simple program to edit and save a JPeg picture... the programer took 3 days to write and optimise the software, you wouldn't expect it to take you the same 3 days to actually wait for the program to carry out that task, would you...

Doesn't make sense what you said there... :confused:

[commodorejohn]

Frequently it does.  The application that works is more "good" than the application that doesn't work.  The application that exists genrerally works, while the application that doesn't exist does not.  Thus the application that has been written is more "good" than the one that hasn't been written.

You can say that the application isn't "good", but it is WAY more "Good" than if it didn't exist at all, which would be more likely if heavy optimization were the requirement.

Again, I'm not saying there aren't sufficient reasons to settle for sub-optimal code - yes, commercial software development takes time and money, and yes, it's more important to meet the parameters in a reasonable frame of time than to delay indefinitely in hopes of attaining perfection (this, for instance, is the reason people took to Linux and not GNU Hurd.)

But this idea that sub-optimal code is the ideal instead of something to be settled for, just because we now have hardware on which the difference is less noticeable, is something I will not accept. No way, nohow.

It is crap for us yes, but business is different and profit & revenue are the only concerns for corporate entities. Being unique is as good as it gets.

See, I'm not going to say that businesses shouldn't settle for what works for them as far as investment/return conisderations go. But I do not understand the now-prevailing notion that corporate financial considerations are the true measure of goodness.

Sure, it works for a business, because software to a business is either a tool to aid in the operation of the business, or a product to be created and distributed by the business. But when did that become the goal for ALL programmers!? Why should our tastes and our ideals be defined by the considerations of some non-existent company that we aren't a part of?

[B00tDisk]

Well clearly I would love to hear about this personal/home computer better than Amiga 1000 between 84 and 87....go ahead Mr expert :roflmao: Even the 1982 C64 had advantages like longer filenames over Win PC <94

Hey remember back when I was talking about 1987 and beyond, then you came in and started up with a bunch of irrelevant bullshit about 1984?  Yeah, good times.

[Franko]

Simplest way to look at how badly PC/Mac software is written is this example... take the Frodo C64 emulator I have on my A1200 with Blizzard PPC @240Mhz...

It runs in full screen at full speed (no frameskip) and with full audio...

Now take the C64 Emulator written for my other iMac PPC @800Mhz...

It runs in full screen but only at almost full speed with full audio (I have to skip every 2nd frame to achieve full speed)...

Why such a difference, simple sloppy non optimised coding on the Mac's version and running under an OS that consists of well over a hundred thousand files (again not optimised) and relies on constant HD access to do the simplest of OS tasks...

Now surely an 800Mhz processor far superior (supposedly) Gfx board and all the rest of it's more modern circuits should be able to beat hands down an old A1200 with 240Hhz PPC board...

The programmer of Frodo for the C64 took his time and optimised his code to get the best out of these limited resources and the results speak for themselves...

That's one the simple reason why no-one will ever convince me that modern day computers with all their GHz and Gigibytes will ever be better than the Amiga when the software (including the OS) are just bloated pieces of badly written crap...

PS:The C64 emulator "Vice" I have for working under OS4.0 on the Amiga is even worse, it's like watching a slide show of still pictures of C64 games, useless, simple reason for that is OS4.0 went the way of PC software Bloated and badly written...

[golem]

That's a bit of a crazy statement to make and doesn't make the slightest bit of sense... :confused:

Of course it's going to take longer to write a piece of software & optimise it to perform a task than it is to have the programs "runtime" to perform it's task be longer or just slightly less than the time taken to write the software...

I mean say for example a simple program to edit and save a JPeg picture... the programer took 3 days to write and optimise the software, you wouldn't expect it to take you the same 3 days to actually wait for the program to carry out that task, would you...

Doesn't make sense what you said there... :confused:

Sorry I wasn't very clear Franko. What I mean is the combined savings on all the runtimes you ever use the program for. I can understand though the drive to make programs perfect in the same way that the most beautiful mathematical equations are those that are concise but very profound.

[B00tDisk]

Oh and by the by, the original mac wasn't a "Fashion statement" (although that's what apple makes these days): it was an attempt to put the power of the Xerox Star on the common user's desk (rather, the 2nd attempt, the first having been the Lisa).

[psxphill]

but MSDOS was stuck with 8 character files until Win95 kludge to hide.

Or you could run Windows NT in 1993.
 
However your point proves that spending time perfecting software is actually a waste.