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From: Tom I Helbekkmo <tih@hamartun.priv.no>
Subject: Re: Oh, yeah? That's nothing! (was: Re: Three languages: A performance comparison)
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Date: Fri, 2 Aug 1996 18:53:44 GMT
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[Olaf Brandes]

|  So what have we got? -- Faster processors that spend their time
|  executing code resulting from interface abstraction techniques
|  necessary for humans to become able to understand and implement
|  large systems.

Nope.  We've got faster processors that spend their time executing
code resulting from interface abstraction techniques based on the idea
that what a tool does, or how well it does it, is much less important
than how good it looks on the surface.  For some weird reason, this
assumption is unquestioningly accepted in the mass market.

|  However, this might not be necessarily so. As an example, Linux has
|  proven that a contemporary and complex OS can still offer efficient
|  hardware access and that abstraction does not necessarily mean
|  inefficiency.

Linux has proven nothing of the kind.  Linux is just one more example
of a modern operating system that is powerful without sacrificing
efficiency.  UNIX has always been like that.  Quoting another posting
from a while back: 4.4BSD on Intel is the UNIX world discovering the
PC; Linux is the PC world discovering UNIX.

Linux has received a lot of publicity, though.  It's kind of like
Java, in a way: Java is nothing special -- compared to Smalltalk or
LISP or a number of other languages, it's not new, it's not
particularly powerful, it contains no particularly new and special
ideas.  Its virtual machine-based portability is "old as them thar
hills".  I could go on...  The point: it's all in the marketing.

-tih
-- 
Tom Ivar Helbekkmo
tih@Hamartun.Priv.NO
