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| From | Andy Walker <anw@cuboid.co.uk> |
|---|---|
| Newsgroups | comp.lang.misc |
| Subject | Re: Algol 68 / Genie - opinions on local procedures? |
| Date | 2025-10-07 22:03 +0100 |
| Organization | Not very much |
| Message-ID | <10c3v6b$ql1i$2@dont-email.me> (permalink) |
| References | (4 earlier) <1080hed$3f6hn$1@dont-email.me> <10832ej$3knom$1@dont-email.me> <10835na$1m96$7@dont-email.me> <1085jvi$7gcv$1@dont-email.me> <10bps7v$4407$1@paganini.bofh.team> |
On 04/10/2025 02:11, Waldek Hebisch wrote:
> Andy Walker <anw@cuboid.co.uk> wrote:
>> On 20/08/2025 01:43, Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:
[...]
>>> If you were to run an old OS on new hardware, that would need drivers for
>>> that new hardware, too.
>> Yes, but what is so special about a modern disc drive, monitor,
>> keyboard, mouse, ... that it needs "the vast majority" of 40M lines more
>> than its equivalent for a PDP-11? Does this not again make Janis's point?
> Lawrence gave a good list of things, but let me note few additional
> aspects. First there is _a lot_ of different drivers. In PDP-11
> times there were short list of available devices. Now there is a lot
> of different devices on the market and each one potentially need a
> specialised driver in the kernel. [...]
Yes, but one would expect that to drive standardisation rather
than bloat. There are rather a lot of devices that I can plug into the
mains in my home, but I don't have to install hundreds or thousands of
different types of socket.
> I think that comparisons with early mainframes or PDP-11 are
> misleading in the sence that on early machines programmes struggled
> to fit programs into avaliable memory. Common technique was keeping
> data on disc and having multiple sequential passes. Program
> itself could be split into several overlays. Use of overlays
> essentially vanished with introduction of virtual memory coupled
> with multimegabyte real RAM. More relevant are comparisons
> with VAX and early Linux.
I would take issue with some of the historical aspects, but it
would take us on a long detour. Just one comment: we've had virtual
memory since 1959 [Atlas].
> AFAICS bloat happens mostly in user level. One reason is more
> friendly attitude of modern programs: instead of numeric error
> codes programs contains actual error messages.
The systems I've used have always used actual error messages!
[...]
> One reason that modern system are big and bloated is recursive
> pulling of dependencies. Namely, there is tendency to delegate
> work to libraries and more generally to depend on "standard"
> tools. But this in turn creates pressure on libraries and
> tools to cover "all" use cases and in particular to include
> rarely used functionality.
Yes, but that's the sort of pressure that needs to be
resisted; and isn't,
[...]
> Hmm, on my machine '/usr/bin' contains 2547 commands. IIRC "minimal"
> install give some hundreds of commands, so most commands is from
> packages that I explicitely installed or their dependencies.
I have 2580 in my "/usr/bin". That is almost all from the
"medium (recommended)" installation; a handful of others have been
added when I've found something missing (I'd guess perhaps 10). Of
those I've actually used just 64! [Plus 26 in "$HOME/bin".] I
checked a random sample of those 2580; more than 2/3 I have no
idea from the name what they are for [yes, I know I can find out],
and I'm an experienced Unix user with much more CS knowledge than
the average punter. If I were to read an introductory book on
Linux, I doubt whether many more than those 64 would be mentioned,
so I wouldn't even be pointed at the "average" command.
--
Andy Walker, Nottingham.
Andy's music pages: www.cuboid.me.uk/andy/Music
Composer of the day: www.cuboid.me.uk/andy/Music/Composers/Necke
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Algol 68 / Genie - opinions on local procedures? Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2025-08-18 04:52 +0200
Re: Algol 68 / Genie - opinions on local procedures? Andy Walker <anw@cuboid.co.uk> - 2025-08-18 16:54 +0100
Re: Algol 68 / Genie - opinions on local procedures? Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2025-08-18 18:30 +0200
Re: Algol 68 / Genie - opinions on local procedures? Andy Walker <anw@cuboid.co.uk> - 2025-08-19 00:45 +0100
Re: Algol 68 / Genie - opinions on local procedures? Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2025-08-19 02:44 +0200
Re: Algol 68 / Genie - opinions on local procedures? Andy Walker <anw@cuboid.co.uk> - 2025-08-20 00:47 +0100
Re: Algol 68 / Genie - opinions on local procedures? Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-08-20 00:43 +0000
Re: Algol 68 / Genie - opinions on local procedures? Andy Walker <anw@cuboid.co.uk> - 2025-08-20 23:58 +0100
Re: Algol 68 / Genie - opinions on local procedures? Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-08-21 02:59 +0000
Re: Algol 68 / Genie - opinions on local procedures? Andy Walker <anw@cuboid.co.uk> - 2025-08-23 00:42 +0100
Re: Algol 68 / Genie - opinions on local procedures? Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2025-08-23 02:29 +0200
Re: Algol 68 / Genie - opinions on local procedures? Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-08-23 02:36 +0000
Economizing resource requirements (was Re: Algol 68 / Genie - opinions on local procedures?) Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2025-08-21 21:02 +0200
Re: Algol 68 / Genie - opinions on local procedures? antispam@fricas.org (Waldek Hebisch) - 2025-10-04 01:11 +0000
Re: Algol 68 / Genie - opinions on local procedures? Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-10-04 03:37 +0000
Re: Algol 68 / Genie - opinions on local procedures? Andy Walker <anw@cuboid.co.uk> - 2025-10-07 22:03 +0100
Re: Algol 68 / Genie - opinions on local procedures? Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-10-07 22:04 +0000
Various digressions (was Re: Algol 68 / Genie - opinions on local procedures?) Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2025-10-08 01:27 +0200
Re: Algol 68 / Genie - opinions on local procedures? Andy Walker <anw@cuboid.co.uk> - 2025-10-10 01:11 +0100
Re: Algol 68 / Genie - opinions on local procedures? Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-10-10 01:39 +0000
Re: Algol 68 / Genie - opinions on local procedures? Andy Walker <anw@cuboid.co.uk> - 2025-10-11 12:47 +0100
Re: Algol 68 / Genie - opinions on local procedures? antispam@fricas.org (Waldek Hebisch) - 2025-10-08 17:04 +0000
simplicity / complexity Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> - 2025-08-26 18:42 +0000
Re: simplicity / complexity Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-08-27 00:28 +0000
Re: simplicity / complexity Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> - 2025-08-30 19:10 +0000
Re: simplicity / complexity Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-08-30 22:43 +0000
[OT] NetBSD vs. Linux(-based systems) Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> - 2025-09-04 18:50 +0000
Re: [OT] NetBSD vs. Linux(-based systems) Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-09-05 00:03 +0000
Re: [OT] NetBSD vs. Linux(-based systems) Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> - 2025-09-07 15:55 +0000
Re: [OT] NetBSD vs. Linux(-based systems) Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-09-07 21:17 +0000
Re: [OT] NetBSD vs. Linux(-based systems) cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2025-09-05 12:02 +0000
Re: [OT] NetBSD vs. Linux(-based systems) Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> - 2025-09-07 16:30 +0000
Re: simplicity / complexity Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2025-08-27 07:53 +0200
Re: simplicity / complexity Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> - 2025-08-30 19:39 +0000
Re: simplicity / complexity Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-08-30 22:45 +0000
Re: simplicity / complexity Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> - 2025-08-31 13:35 +0000
Re: simplicity / complexity Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-08-31 22:40 +0000
[OT] free software Ivan Shmakov <ivan@siamics.netREMOVE.invalid> - 2025-09-04 18:25 +0000
Re: simplicity / complexity antispam@fricas.org (Waldek Hebisch) - 2025-10-08 14:03 +0000
Re: simplicity / complexity Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2025-10-08 16:21 +0200
Re: simplicity / complexity John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> - 2025-10-08 08:08 -0700
Re: simplicity / complexity Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-10-08 21:18 +0000
Re: simplicity / complexity John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> - 2025-10-08 14:31 -0700
Re: simplicity / complexity Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-10-09 00:09 +0000
Re: simplicity / complexity John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> - 2025-10-09 08:44 -0700
Re: simplicity / complexity Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2025-10-09 21:52 +0000
Re: simplicity / complexity John Ames <commodorejohn@gmail.com> - 2025-10-09 15:21 -0700
Re: simplicity / complexity antispam@fricas.org (Waldek Hebisch) - 2025-10-09 00:34 +0000
Re: simplicity / complexity Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2025-10-09 03:48 +0200
Re: simplicity / complexity ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) - 2025-10-08 14:53 +0000
Re: simplicity / complexity ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) - 2025-10-08 15:24 +0000
Re: simplicity / complexity antispam@fricas.org (Waldek Hebisch) - 2025-10-09 01:39 +0000
Re: simplicity / complexity Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2025-10-09 04:00 +0200
Re: simplicity / complexity antispam@fricas.org (Waldek Hebisch) - 2025-10-09 14:19 +0000
Re: simplicity / complexity ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) - 2025-10-09 14:48 +0000
Re: simplicity / complexity Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2025-10-10 12:36 +0200
Re: simplicity / complexity Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2025-10-10 12:09 +0200
Re: simplicity / complexity Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2025-08-31 08:32 +0200
Re: simplicity / complexity Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> - 2025-08-31 08:34 +0200
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