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Groups > comp.arch.embedded > #26379

Re: exposing resource usage

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On 14.4.2017 г. 22:45, Don Y wrote:
> Hi Dimiter,
>

Hi Don,

> On 4/14/2017 11:26 AM, Dimiter_Popoff wrote:
>> On 14.4.2017 г. 15:33, upsidedown@downunder.com wrote:
>>
>>> I just realized how old I am (still one of the youngest in CAE and
>>> especially SED newsgroups). During my career in various forms of
>>> computing, the prace/performance  has been improved by a ratio one to
>>> a million, depending on how you interpret the Moore's law (is the
>>> price/performance ratio doubling every 18 or 24 months). With such
>>> huge rations, it is cost effective to do things in one way and other
>>> 2-4 years in a completely different way.
>>>
>>> Things that required dedicated designs and optimization in the past
>>> does not make sense these days, unless you are making several million
>>> copies and want to save a single cent from the production cost.
>>>
>>> For low volume products, it doesn't make sense to use too much
>>> optimization these days. Thus a person with long experience really
>>> needs to think, how much "clever" features are used.
>>
>> The good thing about aging is that we don't notice it a lot ourselves as
>> long as we are healthy. The outside world takes care of keeping us up
>> to date of course...
>
> ...*if* you let it!

well we can choose to ignore the reminders of course and we do it - to
the extent possible :). Staying busy doing new things is the best recipe
I know of.

>
>> Hardware has always been ahead of software and as hardware becomes
>> faster for the same tasks done 30+ years ago the gap is allowed to
>> widen - to scary dimensions I would say. But this is how evolution works
>> I guess, eventually some balance will be reached. Not that we have
>> that moment in sight as far as I can see.
>
> Its unfair to suggest that software hasn't ALSO evolved/improved
> (in terms of "concepts per design" or some other bogo-metric).

Oh I am not saying that, of course software has also evolved. Just not
at the same quality/pace ratio, pace might have been even higher than
with hardware.

> One can do things in software, now, "in an afternoon" that would have
> taken weeks/months/years decades ago.  And, with a greater "first pass
> success rate"!

Yes of course. But this is mainly because we still have to do more or
less the same stuff we did during the 80-s having resources several
orders of magnitude faster.
I am not saying this is a bad thing, we all do
what is practical; what I am saying is that there is a lot of
room for software to evolve in terms of efficiency. For example todays
systems use gigabytes of RAM most of which stay untouched for ages,
this is a resource evolution will eventually find useful things for.

>
> The thing that has been slowest to evolve is the meatware driving
> the software design methodologies.  It's (apparently?) too hard for
> folks to evolve their mindsets as fast as the hardware/software
> technologies.  Too easy ("comforting/reassuring"?) to cling to
> "the old way" of doing things -- even though that phraseology
> (the OLD way) implicitly acknowledges that there *are* NEW way(s)!
>

Well this is part of life of course. But I think what holds things
back most is the sheer bulkiness of the task of programming complex
things, we are almost at a point where no single person can see the
entire picture (in fact in almost all cases there is no such person).
As an obvious consequence things get messy just because too many people
are involved.
I suppose until we reach a level where software will evolve on its
own things will stay messy and probably get messier than they are
today. Not sure how far we are from this point, may be not too
far. I don't have anything like that working at my desk of course
but I can see how I could pursue it based on what I already have - if
I could afford the time to try.

Dimiter

------------------------------------------------------
Dimiter Popoff, TGI             http://www.tgi-sci.com
------------------------------------------------------
http://www.flickr.com/photos/didi_tgi/

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Thread

exposing resource usage Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> - 2017-04-13 18:22 -0700
  Re: exposing resource usage Robert Wessel <robertwessel2@yahoo.com> - 2017-04-13 20:56 -0500
    Re: exposing resource usage Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> - 2017-04-13 22:26 -0700
    Re: exposing resource usage upsidedown@downunder.com - 2017-04-14 10:24 +0300
      Re: exposing resource usage Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> - 2017-04-14 00:53 -0700
        Re: exposing resource usage upsidedown@downunder.com - 2017-04-14 12:53 +0300
          Re: exposing resource usage upsidedown@downunder.com - 2017-04-14 15:33 +0300
            Re: exposing resource usage Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> - 2017-04-14 10:22 -0700
              Re: exposing resource usage upsidedown@downunder.com - 2017-04-17 20:24 +0300
                Re: exposing resource usage Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> - 2017-04-17 12:13 -0700
            Re: exposing resource usage Dimiter_Popoff <dp@tgi-sci.com> - 2017-04-14 21:26 +0300
              Re: exposing resource usage Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> - 2017-04-14 12:45 -0700
                Re: exposing resource usage Dimiter_Popoff <dp@tgi-sci.com> - 2017-04-15 00:27 +0300
                Re: exposing resource usage Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> - 2017-04-14 20:45 -0700
          Re: exposing resource usage Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> - 2017-04-14 10:11 -0700
  Re: exposing resource usage Tim Wescott <seemywebsite@myfooter.really> - 2017-04-14 12:54 -0500
    Re: exposing resource usage Don Y <blockedofcourse@foo.invalid> - 2017-04-14 11:44 -0700

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