8 May
2018
8 May
'18
6:32 p.m.
On Tue, May 8, 2018 at 11:31 AM, Steve Johnson <scj(a)yaccman.com> wrote:
Well, as I look to the future I see the whole approach
we have to software
running into a dead end. In fact, I think software is holding us back.
You might be right here, but where we disagree I think is economics. The
problem is that we can not afford to replace SW. As I like to point out,
Fortran still pays my salary -- why because all the data and codes that use
that data written since the late 1950s.
Its just worse in the commercial side. Word and Lookout/Exchange sucks -
but people use them and they are not going away. Think about the LISP
Machine or the CM1 - lots of people though they were 'better' for some
concept of goodness. But they failed in the end.
...
Starting about 2000, this changed. Hardware was no longer offering
increased speed. But what it was offering was massive parallelism. The
response was to cling to the one instruction at a time model, introducing
multicore and its attendant hardware complexity to try to cling to the
previous model of programming. The hardware to make this possible is
expensive and does not scale.
I agree but ... IMO its going to take a real Christensen disruption with a
new customer base. I just don't see that happening any time soon.
Without a new customer base to support the new technology, the economics
of the keeping the old running has and will continue to go forward.
And it's exciting...
I agree and I'm a fan and cheering from the sidelines .... but I'm
skeptical of success because the economics don't play to success..