I think, a discussion about PF's is somewhat off-topic here.
Zenman wrote: Mr.ghisler should hire some people to modify some unimportant code and upgrade his compiler.
What do you mean by 'unimportant code' ? Any code in an executable is there for some reason I think, otherwise it wouldn't be there. Another thing of course is the finetuning by making the routines more efficient, plus the debugging. In theory, this proces should lead to even a smaller size of the program. The same should be valid for the next version of an OS. In reality, this of course often isn't the case, because of new concepts and new extensions added to the system, so the application has to keep up with the recent developments.
Jungle wrote: I remember the ZX Spectrum and those great things that coders wrote having only 48 or 128 Kb of RAM.
I don't want to brag here, but I started with a ZX 81, which had 2K Ram that had to be shared by the basic program and the contents of the tv-screen. This forced me to program with as less lines as possible, and to make an optimal use of the space. Later the same with writing in machinecode. I don't program any more, but I have never left this principle, even with today's hardware with high clockspeeds and giga's of disks and ram. That's why
majkinetor wrote: It is not so important to be on floppy but to be as small as possible, because it is the only good way.
is right.
3rd-world people ? What's wrong with being content with some OS version, because everything is functioning fine ? It just depends on the personal circumstances and the kind of work to be performed.
I consider it ridiculous, that a person, only using some text-editor, does this on a set running on a 2 Ghz clockspeed.
My main machine is running W2000. Everything is ok, so that's final. No need to follow the consumertrends for those
huge XP's or Longhorn's etc. I have my previous set (233 Mhz) still operational for other activities. Plus, and this could be considered as 'stone-age' people, I still have one of my first XT's (33 Mhz) available as well, running DOS 6.2 with, of course, NC on it, to use as a game-computer. This, because my main set is for my work, not for entertainment.
Games like Dune I, Wolfenstein, Lemmings, or The Incredible Machine were very well programmed, fitting on one diskette (floppy is the wrong word) considering the tenth of levels available, all with different backgrounds and options.
Lefteous wrote: The size of an executable doesn't say anything about its speed.
Right on. But I'm afraid the idea has been implanted, that 'the bigger the better'. In pc-settings, often on the contrary, I would say.
I would like to add a concept by the late prof.
E.W. Dijkstra : a program should be 'elegant'.
