| Author |
Message |
Frank Bemelman
Guest
|
 Posted:
Sat Dec 25, 2004 1:09 am Post subject:
Re: what's a callback? |
|
|
"Richard Henry" <rphenry@home.com> schreef in bericht
news:YmZyd.3706$yW5.2601@fed1read02...
| Quote: |
"Frank Bemelman" <f.bemelmanq@xs4all.invalid.nl> wrote in message
news:41cc43bf$0$6213$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl...
"John Larkin" <john@spamless.usa> schreef in bericht
news:iveos0pou4573r7brp8qt7vmcsnsahgb2m@4ax.com...
On Thu, 23 Dec 2004 22:53:28 +0100, "Frank Bemelman"
f.bemelmanq@xs4all.invalid.nl> wrote:
My point is that the argument that Windows is 'bloated' doesn't hold.
I bet that there are more PIC's running (relative) bloated code than
PC's. Programmers at Microsoft aren't that stupid.
They're not stupid, but, working as a team, they do manage to produce
prodigious amounts of very bad code. After a decade of effort, they
still seem incapable of preventing buffer overflow exploits, and every
generation of Windows runs slower and is more difficult to maintain.
It keeps pace with the hardware, it is not that it gets slower. On the
contrary. Win3.0 was typically found on 386sx running at 33MHz. Now that
was slow indeed. But if you go out to by a windows PC today, it is at
least 2GHz or better, and it does not run slow at all. Of course you
shouldn't upgrade software on old PC.
I've seen a bit of the Windows source code, and it's a mess. Windows
is simply bad programming.
As you once told, you don't write in C or C++, but only in 68K assembler
and Power Basic, IIRC. How can you be the judge of that? I've written
a dozen or so of windows applications, and my first attempts were indeed
a mess because there is a lot you need to know. But the more I have
learnt
about it, the more I realize that there is no simple approach to make
all these little wonders happen. Embedded computing is kindergarten
stuff,
compared to what's under the hood of windows. Okay, it crashes
sometimes,
big deal.
I have been involved in the past with serious efforts to replace aircraft
mechanical instruments with computer displays. If the OS crashes, people
die.
No Windows need apply.
|
You would be crazy to even try using windows in such an environment. I
would not set one foot on a plane if I knew it was run by windows software.
Software running on the average desktop computer is less critical.
--
Thanks, Frank.
(remove 'q' and 'invalid' when replying by email) |
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 |
Frank Bemelman
Guest
|
| Posted:
Sat Dec 25, 2004 1:28 am Post subject:
Re: what's a callback? |
|
|
"Charles W. Johson Jr." <qrus19@mindsprUng.com past to present> schreef in
bericht news:cA_yd.9141$9j5.752@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net...
| Quote: | Actually one of the major problems with the Windows OS is that so many
Computer Science and bussiness manager types write it. They honestly
believe
that grandma being able to use the computer is more important than the
fact
that some computer expert will complain about a 20X wait for his computer
to
boot. Personally I'd like a nice clean interface that doesn't use the hard
disk drive at all something along the lines of the old Commodore sytem
where
the OS is all in ROM, though probably better make it flash RAM or some
such
for the PC. I've thought of trying to develop a board that would use the
standard ATA interface and could save the OS to a memory set but I'm just
a
computer programmer with some EET.
|
Grandma *is* more important. Complaining about a 20x boot time is nonsense.
How many times do you boot? I turn on my computer each morning, get a
coffee,
turn on the radio and see what's in my inbox.
Windows takes a lot of time to boot, because it checks a lot of things
during
the boot. Depending on what you installed on top of it, it may take a while
longer. In a network, it takes another extra amount of time, getting a new
IP address perhaps, making connections to other PC's that were part of the
game the day before. Yes, that takes a bit of time.
As a result, you can swap hardware, or put your entire drive in a new
PC and it will work. Windows will discard old drivers for hardware that
has dissapeared and try to find new drivers for the new hardware. That
is incredibly impressive.
--
Thanks, Frank.
(remove 'q' and 'invalid' when replying by email) |
|
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|
|
John Larkin
Guest
|
| Posted:
Sat Dec 25, 2004 2:16 am Post subject:
Re: what's a callback? |
|
|
On Fri, 24 Dec 2004 21:28:22 +0100, "Frank Bemelman"
<f.bemelmanq@xs4all.invalid.nl> wrote:
| Quote: |
"Charles W. Johson Jr." <qrus19@mindsprUng.com past to present> schreef in
bericht news:cA_yd.9141$9j5.752@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net...
Actually one of the major problems with the Windows OS is that so many
Computer Science and bussiness manager types write it. They honestly
believe
that grandma being able to use the computer is more important than the
fact
that some computer expert will complain about a 20X wait for his computer
to
boot. Personally I'd like a nice clean interface that doesn't use the hard
disk drive at all something along the lines of the old Commodore sytem
where
the OS is all in ROM, though probably better make it flash RAM or some
such
for the PC. I've thought of trying to develop a board that would use the
standard ATA interface and could save the OS to a memory set but I'm just
a
computer programmer with some EET.
Grandma *is* more important. Complaining about a 20x boot time is nonsense.
How many times do you boot? I turn on my computer each morning, get a
coffee,
turn on the radio and see what's in my inbox.
Windows takes a lot of time to boot, because it checks a lot of things
during
the boot. Depending on what you installed on top of it, it may take a while
longer. In a network, it takes another extra amount of time, getting a new
IP address perhaps, making connections to other PC's that were part of the
game the day before. Yes, that takes a bit of time.
As a result, you can swap hardware, or put your entire drive in a new
PC and it will work. Windows will discard old drivers for hardware that
has dissapeared and try to find new drivers for the new hardware. That
is incredibly impressive.
|
Microsoft didn't invent loadable drivers (hell, they barely *have*
loadable drivers) or 3rd party hardware or documented APIs. They just
stole others ideas, played catch-up by pre-announcing their products
years ahead of availability, turned out bug-ridden crap, charged
everybody to fix it, and ruthlessly and illegally leveraged the OS to
kill off the people whose ideas they stole.
Microsoft recently announced another ripoff of somebody else's market
and product, bundling it with the OS, thus killing the company that
pioneered the concept. When Bill was asked how the victim company
could possibly survive, he said that they should "learn to innovate."
John |
|
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|
|
Gene S. Berkowitz
Guest
|
| Posted:
Sat Dec 25, 2004 2:30 am Post subject:
Re: what's a callback? |
|
|
In article <41cc7b98$0$6220$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl>,
f.bemelmanq@xs4all.invalid.nl says...
| Quote: |
"Charles W. Johson Jr." <qrus19@mindsprUng.com past to present> schreef in
bericht news:cA_yd.9141$9j5.752@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net...
Actually one of the major problems with the Windows OS is that so many
Computer Science and bussiness manager types write it. They honestly
believe
that grandma being able to use the computer is more important than the
fact
that some computer expert will complain about a 20X wait for his computer
to
boot. Personally I'd like a nice clean interface that doesn't use the hard
disk drive at all something along the lines of the old Commodore sytem
where
the OS is all in ROM, though probably better make it flash RAM or some
such
for the PC. I've thought of trying to develop a board that would use the
standard ATA interface and could save the OS to a memory set but I'm just
a
computer programmer with some EET.
Grandma *is* more important. Complaining about a 20x boot time is nonsense.
How many times do you boot? I turn on my computer each morning, get a
coffee,
turn on the radio and see what's in my inbox.
Windows takes a lot of time to boot, because it checks a lot of things
during
the boot. Depending on what you installed on top of it, it may take a while
longer. In a network, it takes another extra amount of time, getting a new
IP address perhaps, making connections to other PC's that were part of the
game the day before. Yes, that takes a bit of time.
As a result, you can swap hardware, or put your entire drive in a new
PC and it will work. Windows will discard old drivers for hardware that
has dissapeared and try to find new drivers for the new hardware. That
is incredibly impressive.
|
I started on a DEC PDP-8/L with 4K of core memory. Due to a never-
determined hardware problem, the FOCAL interpreter was often damaged
and had to be reloaded from paper tape. We would key in the boot loader
using the front panel toggle switches, then start the tape, which took
approximately 20 minutes to load. Someone had to babysit the paper tape
as it spooled out, keeping it in a nice fanfold so it wouldn't tangle.
So, yes, a three-minute startup is fine with me.
--Gene |
|
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|
|
John Larkin
Guest
|
| Posted:
Sat Dec 25, 2004 3:10 am Post subject:
Re: what's a callback? |
|
|
On Fri, 24 Dec 2004 16:30:38 -0500, Gene S. Berkowitz
<first.last@comcast.net> wrote:
| Quote: | In article <41cc7b98$0$6220$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl>,
f.bemelmanq@xs4all.invalid.nl says...
"Charles W. Johson Jr." <qrus19@mindsprUng.com past to present> schreef in
bericht news:cA_yd.9141$9j5.752@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net...
Actually one of the major problems with the Windows OS is that so many
Computer Science and bussiness manager types write it. They honestly
believe
that grandma being able to use the computer is more important than the
fact
that some computer expert will complain about a 20X wait for his computer
to
boot. Personally I'd like a nice clean interface that doesn't use the hard
disk drive at all something along the lines of the old Commodore sytem
where
the OS is all in ROM, though probably better make it flash RAM or some
such
for the PC. I've thought of trying to develop a board that would use the
standard ATA interface and could save the OS to a memory set but I'm just
a
computer programmer with some EET.
Grandma *is* more important. Complaining about a 20x boot time is nonsense.
How many times do you boot? I turn on my computer each morning, get a
coffee,
turn on the radio and see what's in my inbox.
Windows takes a lot of time to boot, because it checks a lot of things
during
the boot. Depending on what you installed on top of it, it may take a while
longer. In a network, it takes another extra amount of time, getting a new
IP address perhaps, making connections to other PC's that were part of the
game the day before. Yes, that takes a bit of time.
As a result, you can swap hardware, or put your entire drive in a new
PC and it will work. Windows will discard old drivers for hardware that
has dissapeared and try to find new drivers for the new hardware. That
is incredibly impressive.
I started on a DEC PDP-8/L with 4K of core memory. Due to a never-
determined hardware problem, the FOCAL interpreter was often damaged
and had to be reloaded from paper tape. We would key in the boot loader
using the front panel toggle switches, then start the tape, which took
approximately 20 minutes to load. Someone had to babysit the paper tape
as it spooled out, keeping it in a nice fanfold so it wouldn't tangle.
So, yes, a three-minute startup is fine with me.
--Gene
|
I had a high-speed paper tape reader, so it wasn't bad. And Focal
seemed to be very reliable... I could run apps for weeks without
reloading. I got a lot of mileage out of Focal-11, too; I actually
contributed the random number generator to Rick Merrill (I did a
pseudorandom xor shift register in software, replacing his classic old
modulo code) and got acknowledged in the source code.
But it's not very fair to compare 35-year old iron running at 1 MHz to
modern stuff. But I recall loading Focal-11 from high-speed paper tape
in about the same time as my Windows boots today. I could load it from
magtape in a second or two.
John |
|
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|
|
Frank Bemelman
Guest
|
| Posted:
Sat Dec 25, 2004 3:22 am Post subject:
Re: what's a callback? |
|
|
"John Larkin" <john@spamless.usa> schreef in bericht
news:2c1ps01b8hm56dq6of2hquoneepfrm15b4@4ax.com...
| Quote: | On Fri, 24 Dec 2004 21:28:22 +0100, "Frank Bemelman"
f.bemelmanq@xs4all.invalid.nl> wrote:
Grandma *is* more important. Complaining about a 20x boot time is
nonsense.
How many times do you boot? I turn on my computer each morning, get a
coffee,
turn on the radio and see what's in my inbox.
Windows takes a lot of time to boot, because it checks a lot of things
during
the boot. Depending on what you installed on top of it, it may take a
while
longer. In a network, it takes another extra amount of time, getting a
new
IP address perhaps, making connections to other PC's that were part of
the
game the day before. Yes, that takes a bit of time.
As a result, you can swap hardware, or put your entire drive in a new
PC and it will work. Windows will discard old drivers for hardware that
has dissapeared and try to find new drivers for the new hardware. That
is incredibly impressive.
Microsoft didn't invent loadable drivers (hell, they barely *have*
loadable drivers) or 3rd party hardware or documented APIs. They just
stole others ideas, played catch-up by pre-announcing their products
years ahead of availability, turned out bug-ridden crap, charged
everybody to fix it, and ruthlessly and illegally leveraged the OS to
kill off the people whose ideas they stole.
Microsoft recently announced another ripoff of somebody else's market
and product, bundling it with the OS, thus killing the company that
pioneered the concept. When Bill was asked how the victim company
could possibly survive, he said that they should "learn to innovate."
|
I agree that their business codes are nothing to be proud off. Well,
they got a nice fine from the EU.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3563697.stm
Still, peanuts for Bill. Perhaps the US government should squeeze
a bit more money out of Bill ;)
Maybe that is what really bothers you, their attitude. Their products
are not too bad though (anything after WIN3.x, that is).
--
Thanks, Frank.
(remove 'q' and 'invalid' when replying by email) |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Frank Bemelman
Guest
|
| Posted:
Sat Dec 25, 2004 3:38 am Post subject:
Re: what's a callback? |
|
|
"Gene S. Berkowitz" <first.last@comcast.net> schreef in bericht
news:MPG.1c36548b856760c2989777@news.comcast.giganews.com...
| Quote: | In article <41cc7b98$0$6220$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl>,
f.bemelmanq@xs4all.invalid.nl says...
"Charles W. Johson Jr." <qrus19@mindsprUng.com past to present> schreef
in
bericht news:cA_yd.9141$9j5.752@newsread3.news.pas.earthlink.net...
Actually one of the major problems with the Windows OS is that so many
Computer Science and bussiness manager types write it. They honestly
believe
that grandma being able to use the computer is more important than the
fact
that some computer expert will complain about a 20X wait for his
computer
to
boot. Personally I'd like a nice clean interface that doesn't use the
hard
disk drive at all something along the lines of the old Commodore sytem
where
the OS is all in ROM, though probably better make it flash RAM or some
such
for the PC. I've thought of trying to develop a board that would use
the
standard ATA interface and could save the OS to a memory set but I'm
just
a
computer programmer with some EET.
Grandma *is* more important. Complaining about a 20x boot time is
nonsense.
How many times do you boot? I turn on my computer each morning, get a
coffee,
turn on the radio and see what's in my inbox.
Windows takes a lot of time to boot, because it checks a lot of things
during
the boot. Depending on what you installed on top of it, it may take a
while
longer. In a network, it takes another extra amount of time, getting a
new
IP address perhaps, making connections to other PC's that were part of
the
game the day before. Yes, that takes a bit of time.
As a result, you can swap hardware, or put your entire drive in a new
PC and it will work. Windows will discard old drivers for hardware that
has dissapeared and try to find new drivers for the new hardware. That
is incredibly impressive.
I started on a DEC PDP-8/L with 4K of core memory. Due to a never-
determined hardware problem, the FOCAL interpreter was often damaged
and had to be reloaded from paper tape. We would key in the boot loader
using the front panel toggle switches, then start the tape, which took
approximately 20 minutes to load. Someone had to babysit the paper tape
as it spooled out, keeping it in a nice fanfold so it wouldn't tangle.
So, yes, a three-minute startup is fine with me.
|
Ah, I once saw that about 30 years ago, on a sales show. The sales person
fiddling with the toggle switches for a minute perhaps, to start the
bootloader
and after that some moonlander game was started. At the time it was very
impressive. Only a few years later I got my apple ][. Costed me an arm and a
leg. Never regretted it. Didn't crash either, it just hang ;) Loved that
name of the 16 bit emulator, sweet16.
Those were the days - but I would't want to back.
--
Thanks, Frank.
(remove 'q' and 'invalid' when replying by email) |
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|
|
John Larkin
Guest
|
| Posted:
Sat Dec 25, 2004 3:56 am Post subject:
Re: what's a callback? |
|
|
On Fri, 24 Dec 2004 20:01:12 GMT, "Charles W. Johson Jr."
<qrus19@mindsprUng.com past to present> wrote:
| Quote: |
"John Larkin" <john@spamless.usa> wrote in message
news:9klos0dbbj4u8tdjr14o7s35306ggrechs@4ax.com...
On Fri, 24 Dec 2004 17:30:07 +0100, "Frank Bemelman"
f.bemelmanq@xs4all.invalid.nl> wrote:
"John Larkin" <john@spamless.usa> schreef in bericht
news:iveos0pou4573r7brp8qt7vmcsnsahgb2m@4ax.com...
On Thu, 23 Dec 2004 22:53:28 +0100, "Frank Bemelman"
f.bemelmanq@xs4all.invalid.nl> wrote:
My point is that the argument that Windows is 'bloated' doesn't hold.
I bet that there are more PIC's running (relative) bloated code than
PC's. Programmers at Microsoft aren't that stupid.
They're not stupid, but, working as a team, they do manage to produce
prodigious amounts of very bad code. After a decade of effort, they
still seem incapable of preventing buffer overflow exploits, and every
generation of Windows runs slower and is more difficult to maintain.
It keeps pace with the hardware, it is not that it gets slower. On the
contrary. Win3.0 was typically found on 386sx running at 33MHz. Now that
was slow indeed. But if you go out to by a windows PC today, it is at
least 2GHz or better, and it does not run slow at all. Of course you
shouldn't upgrade software on old PC.
The hardware struggles to keep up with the bloat of Windows. My
current PC has roughly a thousand times more compute power than my
first DOS machine, boots in about 20x the time, and crashes maybe 10x
as often. That's progress?
I've seen a bit of the Windows source code, and it's a mess. Windows
is simply bad programming.
As you once told, you don't write in C or C++, but only in 68K assembler
and Power Basic, IIRC. How can you be the judge of that?
Well, my stuff starts up instantly and runs 24/7 for decades without
crashing. The sources are more comment than code, so maintenance is
easy.
Every Windows source module has a mandatory header, that's supposed to
document the function, the author, and the revs. A typical module will
have some gibberish name, and in the header section called "Module
Function" the author generally fills in something like (I quote) "what
it says".
Comments are rare and, when they do exist, are often useless or
obscene.
I've written
a dozen or so of windows applications, and my first attempts were indeed
a mess because there is a lot you need to know. But the more I have learnt
about it, the more I realize that there is no simple approach to make
all these little wonders happen.
That's because the Windows paradigm was kluged up in a hurry, and got
worse from then on. Decades before Windows has cobbled up, real,
solid, multiuser, bulletproof OSs had been running for years...
literally running without crashing for years. DECs OSs used an event
flag structure that made programs, basicly, into synchronous state
machines; Windows uses an event-driven architecture that makes
programs into asynchronus-logic hairballs.
The irony is that both Windows and the x86 architecture were designed
entirely out of the mainstream of computing.
Embedded computing is kindergarten stuff,
compared to what's under the hood of windows. Okay, it crashes sometimes,
big deal.
Well, that says it all. My products don't crash because I don't allow
them to. But then, I'm not getting rich off forced upgrades like
certain parties I could name. The only thing Windows does well is make
money; that's all it was intended to do.
John
Actually one of the major problems with the Windows OS is that so many
Computer Science and bussiness manager types write it. They honestly believe
that grandma being able to use the computer is more important than the fact
that some computer expert will complain about a 20X wait for his computer to
boot.
|
How many grannies can run RegEdit? Or change their IP address? Or set
IE to its non-default (ie, somewhat secure) settings?
Changing from modem to DSL, or setting up your internet stuff, on a
Mac is stunning; you just do the obvious stuff, and it's all obvious.
My next-door neighbow is a sweet gay guy with zero technical
competance; naturally, he's a Mac person. When I got my DSL, we
drilled a hole through our walls and ran a Cat5 from my hub to his
iMac. He clicked a few times, typed in his new IP, and was online in a
couple of minutes. It took me, a programmer and EE, about an hour to
persuade Windows to do the same thing. I used his Mac to go to my
provider's web site to read the Windows procedures.
John |
|
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|
|
John Larkin
Guest
|
| Posted:
Sat Dec 25, 2004 4:01 am Post subject:
Re: what's a callback? |
|
|
On Fri, 24 Dec 2004 23:22:57 +0100, "Frank Bemelman"
<f.bemelmanq@xs4all.invalid.nl> wrote:
| Quote: | "John Larkin" <john@spamless.usa> schreef in bericht
news:2c1ps01b8hm56dq6of2hquoneepfrm15b4@4ax.com...
On Fri, 24 Dec 2004 21:28:22 +0100, "Frank Bemelman"
f.bemelmanq@xs4all.invalid.nl> wrote:
Grandma *is* more important. Complaining about a 20x boot time is
nonsense.
How many times do you boot? I turn on my computer each morning, get a
coffee,
turn on the radio and see what's in my inbox.
Windows takes a lot of time to boot, because it checks a lot of things
during
the boot. Depending on what you installed on top of it, it may take a
while
longer. In a network, it takes another extra amount of time, getting a
new
IP address perhaps, making connections to other PC's that were part of
the
game the day before. Yes, that takes a bit of time.
As a result, you can swap hardware, or put your entire drive in a new
PC and it will work. Windows will discard old drivers for hardware that
has dissapeared and try to find new drivers for the new hardware. That
is incredibly impressive.
Microsoft didn't invent loadable drivers (hell, they barely *have*
loadable drivers) or 3rd party hardware or documented APIs. They just
stole others ideas, played catch-up by pre-announcing their products
years ahead of availability, turned out bug-ridden crap, charged
everybody to fix it, and ruthlessly and illegally leveraged the OS to
kill off the people whose ideas they stole.
Microsoft recently announced another ripoff of somebody else's market
and product, bundling it with the OS, thus killing the company that
pioneered the concept. When Bill was asked how the victim company
could possibly survive, he said that they should "learn to innovate."
I agree that their business codes are nothing to be proud off. Well,
they got a nice fine from the EU.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3563697.stm
Still, peanuts for Bill. Perhaps the US government should squeeze
a bit more money out of Bill ;)
Maybe that is what really bothers you, their attitude. Their products
are not too bad though (anything after WIN3.x, that is).
|
No, a Win PC with some decent apps is a enormously useful productivity
tool. I just wish, from an engineering point of view, that it wasn't
such a crappy implementation, and from an ethics point of view, that
they weren't such greedy, vicious bastards. They have fifty billion
dollars, in cash, more than they can ever use; what they are about now
is power.
John |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Frank Bemelman
Guest
|
| Posted:
Sat Dec 25, 2004 4:30 am Post subject:
Re: what's a callback? |
|
|
"John Larkin" <jjlarkin@highSNIPlandTHIStechPLEASEnology.com> schreef in
bericht news:247ps0p44d1n6acoes6ridjne540a3galn@4ax.com...
| Quote: | On Fri, 24 Dec 2004 20:01:12 GMT, "Charles W. Johson Jr."
qrus19@mindsprUng.com past to present> wrote:
"John Larkin" <john@spamless.usa> wrote in message
news:9klos0dbbj4u8tdjr14o7s35306ggrechs@4ax.com...
On Fri, 24 Dec 2004 17:30:07 +0100, "Frank Bemelman"
f.bemelmanq@xs4all.invalid.nl> wrote:
"John Larkin" <john@spamless.usa> schreef in bericht
news:iveos0pou4573r7brp8qt7vmcsnsahgb2m@4ax.com...
On Thu, 23 Dec 2004 22:53:28 +0100, "Frank Bemelman"
f.bemelmanq@xs4all.invalid.nl> wrote:
My point is that the argument that Windows is 'bloated' doesn't
hold.
I bet that there are more PIC's running (relative) bloated code than
PC's. Programmers at Microsoft aren't that stupid.
They're not stupid, but, working as a team, they do manage to produce
prodigious amounts of very bad code. After a decade of effort, they
still seem incapable of preventing buffer overflow exploits, and
every
generation of Windows runs slower and is more difficult to maintain.
It keeps pace with the hardware, it is not that it gets slower. On the
contrary. Win3.0 was typically found on 386sx running at 33MHz. Now
that
was slow indeed. But if you go out to by a windows PC today, it is at
least 2GHz or better, and it does not run slow at all. Of course you
shouldn't upgrade software on old PC.
The hardware struggles to keep up with the bloat of Windows. My
current PC has roughly a thousand times more compute power than my
first DOS machine, boots in about 20x the time, and crashes maybe 10x
as often. That's progress?
I've seen a bit of the Windows source code, and it's a mess. Windows
is simply bad programming.
As you once told, you don't write in C or C++, but only in 68K
assembler
and Power Basic, IIRC. How can you be the judge of that?
Well, my stuff starts up instantly and runs 24/7 for decades without
crashing. The sources are more comment than code, so maintenance is
easy.
Every Windows source module has a mandatory header, that's supposed to
document the function, the author, and the revs. A typical module will
have some gibberish name, and in the header section called "Module
Function" the author generally fills in something like (I quote) "what
it says".
Comments are rare and, when they do exist, are often useless or
obscene.
I've written
a dozen or so of windows applications, and my first attempts were
indeed
a mess because there is a lot you need to know. But the more I have
learnt
about it, the more I realize that there is no simple approach to make
all these little wonders happen.
That's because the Windows paradigm was kluged up in a hurry, and got
worse from then on. Decades before Windows has cobbled up, real,
solid, multiuser, bulletproof OSs had been running for years...
literally running without crashing for years. DECs OSs used an event
flag structure that made programs, basicly, into synchronous state
machines; Windows uses an event-driven architecture that makes
programs into asynchronus-logic hairballs.
The irony is that both Windows and the x86 architecture were designed
entirely out of the mainstream of computing.
Embedded computing is kindergarten stuff,
compared to what's under the hood of windows. Okay, it crashes
sometimes,
big deal.
Well, that says it all. My products don't crash because I don't allow
them to. But then, I'm not getting rich off forced upgrades like
certain parties I could name. The only thing Windows does well is make
money; that's all it was intended to do.
John
Actually one of the major problems with the Windows OS is that so many
Computer Science and bussiness manager types write it. They honestly
believe
that grandma being able to use the computer is more important than the
fact
that some computer expert will complain about a 20X wait for his computer
to
boot.
How many grannies can run RegEdit? Or change their IP address? Or set
IE to its non-default (ie, somewhat secure) settings?
Changing from modem to DSL, or setting up your internet stuff, on a
Mac is stunning; you just do the obvious stuff, and it's all obvious.
My next-door neighbow is a sweet gay guy with zero technical
competance; naturally, he's a Mac person. When I got my DSL, we
drilled a hole through our walls and ran a Cat5 from my hub to his
iMac. He clicked a few times, typed in his new IP, and was online in a
couple of minutes. It took me, a programmer and EE, about an hour to
persuade Windows to do the same thing. I used his Mac to go to my
provider's web site to read the Windows procedures.
|
Ah, you can be really entertaining at times. Keep those stories
coming! You seem to have a lot in common with your neighbour,
except being gay ;)
--
Thanks, Frank.
(remove 'q' and 'invalid' when replying by email) |
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John Larkin
Guest
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| Posted:
Sat Dec 25, 2004 4:38 am Post subject:
Re: what's a callback? |
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On Sat, 25 Dec 2004 00:30:59 +0100, "Frank Bemelman"
<f.bemelmanq@xs4all.invalid.nl> wrote:
| Quote: |
Ah, you can be really entertaining at times. Keep those stories
coming! You seem to have a lot in common with your neighbour,
except being gay ;)
|
Well, he *does* let me borrow his chainsaw.
John |
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Steve at fivetrees
Guest
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| Posted:
Sat Dec 25, 2004 5:16 am Post subject:
Re: what's a callback? |
|
|
"John Larkin" <john@spamless.usa> wrote in message
news:9klos0dbbj4u8tdjr14o7s35306ggrechs@4ax.com...
| Quote: | DECs OSs used an event
flag structure that made programs, basicly, into synchronous state
machines;
|
Which is absolutely the way to go.
| Quote: | Windows uses an event-driven architecture that makes
programs into asynchronus-logic hairballs.
|
Couldn't agree more.
| Quote: | My products don't crash because I don't allow
them to. But then, I'm not getting rich off forced upgrades like
certain parties I could name.
|
I love you, soulbro' <sob>. Have a great Xmas ;).
Steve
http://www.fivetrees.com |
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Steve at fivetrees
Guest
|
| Posted:
Sat Dec 25, 2004 5:50 am Post subject:
Re: what's a callback? |
|
|
"Frank Bemelman" <f.bemelmanq@xs4all.invalid.nl> wrote in message
news:41cc7617$0$6219$e4fe514c@news.xs4all.nl...
| Quote: | You should not compare your embedded stuff with de desktop computer
running windows. Those are two entirely different species. Your 68K
does only one thing - easy. If I plug your software in whatever 68K
board, nothing happens, nada, zip. These are projects that can be
done by just one or two persons, that's why I said it is kindergarten
stuff compared to windows.
|
Hmmm.
I'm not sure there needs to be any distinction between the two: "good"
design remains good, regardless of platform, or degree of complexity.
Granny and her boot time are part of the requirements. Bloat and reliability
are down to the implementation. The two are - and should be kept - separate.
Different mindsets and skillsets.
A "good" programming team should be able to take a well-designed requirement
(for e.g. a vapourware, intuitive OS or application) and turn it (using best
practice, with maximum synchronicity/determinism) into a piece of code which
does what's required, with no surprises and no side-effects. And no bloat.
What's so hard about that? We do it all the time in the embedded arena.
Complexity is *not* the issue.
I deal mainly in bare-metal bulletproof (but plenty complex enough - mainly
cooperative multitasking) code. The lessons I've learned over the years
translate well to the desktop (given a good enough spec). Mainly they have
to do with *managing* complexity, not letting it manage me.
This is a soapbox of mine. I hear "complexity" bandied about as an excuse
for poor code all the time, and it *really* pisses me off. It's a sham, a
smokescreen. Grrrr.
| Quote: | Imagine you had to deliver some kind of open system, where 3rd parties
plug in their boards & drivers in your box. Would you like that? Can
you still guarantee your product doesn't crash?
|
OpenBSD seems to be a pretty good example of an OS that's as reliable as it
gets. I *heart* OpenBSD. (One of my commercial webhosting servers had a
record uptime of 457 days, despite being under hacker attack 24/7 - only
interrupted by a fairly major system upgrade ;).)
Summary: it doesn't have to be this way. There is still a market out there
for a reliable, well-written, reliable, easy-to-use, and mainly *reliable*
desktop OS. Windows ain't it, and neither are *nix nor the Mac (although the
latter are probably/possibly closest). We've had decent multi-level MMUs for
years - a rogue app needn't pull the whole system down. Bah humbug.
Meanwhile, may I wish you all a very merry and restful Christmas!
Steve
http://www.fivetrees.com |
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Anthony Fremont
Guest
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| Posted:
Sat Dec 25, 2004 7:56 am Post subject:
Re: what's a callback? |
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|
"Steve at fivetrees" wrote:
| Quote: | Summary: it doesn't have to be this way. There is still a market out
there
for a reliable, well-written, reliable, easy-to-use, and mainly
*reliable*
desktop OS. Windows ain't it, and neither are *nix nor the Mac
(although the
latter are probably/possibly closest). We've had decent multi-level
MMUs for
years - a rogue app needn't pull the whole system down. Bah humbug.
|
This is precisely what makes me so mad about windows. The PC hardware
is perfectly capable of protecting the OS from this sort of thing, but
MS simply chooses to not do it right. :-(((((( Having spent >20 years
digging around the innards of mainframe OS's, I'm really disappointed at
what is passed off as "enterprise quality" today. |
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John Larkin
Guest
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| Posted:
Sat Dec 25, 2004 11:13 pm Post subject:
Re: what's a callback? |
|
|
| Quote: | This is precisely what makes me so mad about windows. The PC hardware
is perfectly capable of protecting the OS from this sort of thing, but
MS simply chooses to not do it right.
|
Namely, MS can never tell the difference between code and data; they
have finally managed to allow worms in jpeg files, something that was
once considered to be a hilarious joke. When in doubt, execute it.
John |
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