Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry

From	Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de>
Newsgroups	comp.lang.forth
Subject	Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry
Date	2013-05-04 19:31 +0200
Organization	1&1 Internet AG
Message-ID	<km3gl2$4v9$1@online.de> (permalink)
References	<acaaee13-82e0-4ef7-9f35-8e9d343dfb8a@googlegroups.com> <SfKdnfgDY-D4VhnMnZ2dnUVZ_oudnZ2d@supernews.com>

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Andrew Haley wrote:
> Many of us who programmed 8- and 16-bit microprocessors know how fast
> they could be at responding to real-world events and we wonder how
> fast computers would be today if they were programmed in the same way.
> But computers are today required to do more and more things, some of
> them useful but many of them not.  I suspect that vast amounts of what
> computers do is useless, but no-one knows which is the useless part.

Oh, come on, if I look through the Android source code, I can quickly 
identify the useless parts.  It's just that the Android programmers don't 
see it when they are creating useless abstractions.  They have learned 42 
design pattern at school, and now are trying to create the model-view-
container-database-interpreter-proxy-adapater-interface-proxy for everything 
they see.

You like an example?  To play hardware-accelerated video, you need two 
shared memory buffers: One is for an encoded frame, the other is for the 
decoded pictures (YUV in typically 4:2:0 format), of which you have at least 
three when you have B frames.  And a way to tell the DSP which codec you 
have used.  That's it.  And that's essentially how all hardware decoders 
work, and if you don't have an hardware decoder, it's also how all software 
decoders work.  And the same applies for audio decoding, too, all this is 
essentially shared memory stuff, and it's all chopped into chunks called 
"frames".  Every frame has a timestamp: that's when you play it.

So, expose that interface in a generic way (with well-defined constants for 
selecting the codecs, and "I updated the input buffer" + "wait for you 
updating the picture buffer" calls+events), and you are done.  It's just one 
layer of abstraction.

When I read that Google is using OpenMAX AL, which is a Khronos group 
standard, I thought, fine, that's probably going to look like that, because 
OpenGL, another Khronos group standard, in the meantime really is a very 
thin layer on top of the GPU hardware.

But it wasn't.  OpenMAX AL is onion programming at its best, it takes an 
MPEG transport stream.  Nobody sane uses MPEG transport streams anymore for 
anything but legacy (including the MPEG association, they switched to 
Quicktime with MP4).  All more recent formats are frame-oriented, because 
that makes sense.  What doesn't make any sense is extracting something and 
then wrapping it up again, only to be extracted in the next step again.

To keep it simple is something you don't learn at school, for whatever 
reason.

Companies like Google have a youth cult, and pretty strong age 
discrimination, as the young programmers say, the old greybeards don't want 
to program in Python and Java, and probably especially not programm onions, 
but that's the way to go today.  Also, the old greybeards are arrogant and 
say "we had more responsive programs on the C64."  And of course, they did 
it all 10 miles through knee-deep snow, uphill in both directions ;-).

-- 
Bernd Paysan
"If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself"
http://bernd-paysan.de/

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offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Jason Damisch <jasondamisch@yahoo.com> - 2013-05-03 11:17 -0700
  Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnotq.cpm> - 2013-05-03 16:54 -0400
    Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Jason Damisch <jasondamisch@yahoo.com> - 2013-05-03 14:30 -0700
      Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2013-05-04 16:03 -0400
  Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry visualforth@rocketmail.com - 2013-05-03 23:24 -0700
    Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2013-05-04 16:24 -0400
      Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry "visualforth@rocketmail.com" <babruehl@gmail.com> - 2013-05-04 15:01 -0700
      Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2013-05-04 15:50 -0700
        Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2013-05-04 13:45 -1000
          Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry babruehl@gmail.com - 2013-05-04 16:55 -0700
            Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2013-05-04 15:08 -1000
          Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2013-05-04 21:52 -0700
            Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnotq.cpm> - 2013-05-05 18:51 -0400
              Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2013-05-05 18:50 -0400
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnotq.cpm> - 2013-05-05 20:13 -0400
          Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl (Albert van der Horst) - 2013-05-05 09:38 +0000
            Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2013-05-05 17:00 -0400
        Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry "visualforth@rocketmail.com" <babruehl@gmail.com> - 2013-05-04 16:50 -0700
          Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Mark Wills <markrobertwills@yahoo.co.uk> - 2013-05-05 13:02 -0700
            Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Coos Haak <chforth@hccnet.nl> - 2013-05-05 23:14 +0200
            Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2013-05-05 13:44 -1000
              Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Steve <nospam275@gmail.com> - 2013-05-05 21:07 -0700
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2013-05-05 19:35 -1000
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Steve <nospam275@gmail.com> - 2013-05-05 23:17 -0700
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Steve <nospam275@gmail.com> - 2013-05-05 23:39 -0700
            Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry visualforth@rocketmail.com - 2013-05-06 01:21 -0700
      Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Steve <nospam275@gmail.com> - 2013-05-05 00:08 -0700
        Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2013-05-04 21:58 -1000
          Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Steve <nospam275@gmail.com> - 2013-05-05 06:56 -0700
          Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnotq.cpm> - 2013-05-05 18:42 -0400
        Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2013-05-05 17:11 -0400
          Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnotq.cpm> - 2013-05-05 18:41 -0400
            Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2013-05-05 15:42 -0700
            Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Steve <nospam275@gmail.com> - 2013-05-05 20:10 -0700
              Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnotq.cpm> - 2013-05-07 18:53 -0400
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2013-05-07 20:59 -0400
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Steve <nospam275@gmail.com> - 2013-05-07 20:24 -0700
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnotq.cpm> - 2013-05-09 20:16 -0400
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Steve <nospam275@gmail.com> - 2013-05-10 02:14 -0700
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2013-05-07 20:46 -0700
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnotq.cpm> - 2013-05-09 20:12 -0400
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2013-05-11 06:23 -0700
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2013-05-11 11:44 -0400
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2013-05-11 13:27 -0700
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2013-05-11 21:05 -0400
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2013-05-11 18:27 -0700
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnotq.cpm> - 2013-05-15 05:24 -0400
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2013-05-15 10:03 -0700
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2013-05-15 07:30 -1000
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2013-05-15 10:39 -0700
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2013-05-15 08:15 -1000
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2013-05-15 22:56 -0700
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2013-05-15 21:37 -1000
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-05-16 14:01 +0000
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2013-05-16 11:47 -1000
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2013-05-16 23:19 -0400
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2013-05-16 17:38 -1000
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) - 2013-05-17 13:35 +0000
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2013-05-17 08:14 -1000
          Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Steve <nospam275@gmail.com> - 2013-05-05 19:56 -0700
            Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2013-05-06 13:34 -0400
    Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Steve <nospam275@gmail.com> - 2013-05-04 23:50 -0700
  Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-05-04 03:48 -0500
    Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2013-05-04 19:31 +0200
      Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2013-05-04 11:05 -0700
      Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-05-04 13:46 -0500
        Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2013-05-04 16:31 -0400
          Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-05-04 15:58 -0500
            Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2013-05-04 17:04 -0400
              Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-05-04 17:23 -0500
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2013-05-05 10:28 -0400
              Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Bernd Paysan <bernd.paysan@gmx.de> - 2013-05-05 01:41 +0200
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-05-05 04:16 -0500
            Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Mark Wills <markrobertwills@yahoo.co.uk> - 2013-05-05 12:56 -0700
              Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-05-06 05:19 -0500
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Mark Wills <forthfreak@gmail.com> - 2013-05-06 04:01 -0700
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-05-06 09:48 -0500
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2013-05-06 11:08 -0400
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-05-06 17:21 -0500
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Mark Wills <forthfreak@gmail.com> - 2013-05-06 22:58 -0700
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2013-05-07 21:04 -0400
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-05-08 03:02 -0500
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnotq.cpm> - 2013-05-09 20:08 -0400
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2013-05-10 05:03 -0700
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2013-05-10 11:21 -0400
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnotq.cpm> - 2013-05-11 15:53 -0400
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2013-05-11 21:07 -0400
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Mark Wills <forthfreak@gmail.com> - 2013-05-06 08:29 -0700
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnotq.cpm> - 2013-05-09 20:08 -0400
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2013-05-10 11:39 -0400
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnotq.cpm> - 2013-05-11 15:56 -0400
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2013-05-11 21:14 -0400
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry albert@spenarnc.xs4all.nl (Albert van der Horst) - 2013-05-12 12:29 +0000
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2013-05-12 08:33 -1000
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry "Rod Pemberton" <do_not_have@notemailnotq.cpm> - 2013-05-15 05:23 -0400
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2013-05-15 07:43 -1000
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Andrew Haley <andrew29@littlepinkcloud.invalid> - 2013-05-15 14:11 -0500
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Elizabeth D Rather <erather@forth.com> - 2013-05-15 11:41 -1000
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Brad Eckert <hwfwguy@gmail.com> - 2013-05-16 09:35 -0700
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry rickman <gnuarm@gmail.com> - 2013-05-16 13:50 -0400
                Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry dirk.bruehl@usa.net - 2013-05-17 08:53 -0700
          Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry AKE <assadebrahim2000@gmail.com> - 2013-05-05 11:06 -0700
            Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2013-05-05 18:56 -0700
              Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry AKE <assadebrahim2000@gmail.com> - 2013-05-06 03:56 -0700
            Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry visualforth@rocketmail.com - 2013-05-06 00:31 -0700
              Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Steve <nospam275@gmail.com> - 2013-05-06 00:54 -0700
              Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry "Elizabeth D. Rather" <erather@forth.com> - 2013-05-05 22:06 -1000
        Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2013-05-05 02:43 -0700
          Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> - 2013-05-05 19:06 -0700
  Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Steve <nospam275@gmail.com> - 2013-05-04 21:55 -0700
  Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Doug Hoffman <glidedog@gmail.com> - 2013-05-05 07:41 -0400
  Re: offtopic - Critical of the Computer Industry Jason Damisch <jasondamisch@yahoo.com> - 2013-05-05 21:02 -0700

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