Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!unisoft!gethen!isaac From: isaac@gethen.UUCP (Isaac Rabinovitch) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: Re: QNX anyone? Summary: Efficiency and other BIG issues Message-ID: <992@gethen.UUCP> Date: 4 Jul 88 07:18:30 GMT References: <22273@tis.llnl.gov> <4632@mnetor.UUCP> <962@gethen.UUCP> <1286@odyssee.UUCP> Organization: There's Unix there in Oakland Lines: 46 In article <1286@odyssee.UUCP>, pinard@odyssee.UUCP (Francois Pinard) writes: >>(previous discussion on QNX C compiler and its limitation to small >>memory model used to build programs out of small, QNX processes. some >>assert this is a good thing.) > > Even if debatable for efficiency considerations, I see your point for > executable code. There's more than one definition of efficiency. One is making your program work with an absolute minimum of cpu time -- that's the one everyone thinks about first but it's the least important. There's also efficiency of programmer time, efficiency of user time (all these down and dirty MS-DOS programs collide with each other and with the hardware, causing much distraction), efficiency of psychiatric time.... > > But it does not apply when you need large (not so large, after all :-) > data space, for intepreters like LISP or Prolog, or when you are doing > anything requiring large arrays, like (sometimes) mathematical > programming or in-memory databases. Once again, we are reminded that some twit actually thought 64K was all the memory a PC would ever really need! But I digress. You're right, I wouldn't want to develop the programs you describe using the QNX C compiler. But how many of us are writing that kind of program? The real question is whether existing LISP interpreters (and other such programs) will *run* under QNX. And managing memory ought to be the OS's job, no? > > > > Most PC programmers *love* the > > complicated addressing scheme in MS C and its ilk. > > Has it come to your mind that maybe a lot of us just *hate* all this > complexity, but cannot get rid of it without throwing our machines in > the basket? You're not the first person to call me to task for that one, and I'll just back down and apologize for the glib little overcategorization. But it does strike me that many programmers have this attitude. Maybe I associate with the wrong people, but whenever I complain that MS-DOS or the Mac "OS" doesn't support any of the basic system functions, which then must be built into the user program, somebody says, "but that makes them more flexible"! Anyway, I'd sure like to see QNX survive, cause then we could have a real OS *without* throwing away our hardware. (No even 8086 machines!) But we've got more than one albatross around our collective nets. Not just the existing hardware base, but the existing user-vendor-programmer culture, which appears very well entrenched.