Re: [vcf-midatlantic] OT: people don't understand computers anymore
On 06/07/2016 02:03 PM, Bill Sudbrink via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
It's a bit astonishing to me too. We get job candidates with CS degrees from reputable universities who don't know what a register is, can't explain how basic sorts work or why you would even want to know. In my opinion, the most evil phrase to come out of a software engineer's mouth is "I don't want to have to think about...". Yup, it's all abstracted away. You get a "container class" with "iterators" and "find" methods and you're all set. Not fast enough? Throw more hardware at it.
This is raising my blood pressure... gotta stop.
I know exactly how you feel. The shift toward this type of thinking has been building for a long time. It's exactly why I moved entirely into embedded systems development, where we still code in assembler a lot of the time, and we still know how computers actually work and how code actually gets executed. And for people who think this shift is a "good thing": Bullshit. This is the sort of "progress" that landed us in a position where an operating system requires billions of bytes of RAM just to boot. Get some perspective and look at the bigger picture. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
On 06/07/2016 02:28 PM, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
where an operating system requires billions of bytes of RAM just to boot.
Devil's advocate... so what? Storage is basically free now.
Right, that's what these kids are taught. Trouble is, it ISN'T free, and it's not scalable. A number of bad things happen under the covers when something uses too much RAM or too much disk. Just think about caching, for example. Is it "just fine" that things are so damn slow nowadays? This is one of the reasons. Another point is power consumption. Storage pulls a good bit of power. Consuming more storage than necessary means consuming more power than necessary. This might only add ten bucks to your power bill, but look at big computers with hundreds, or even thousands of processors. That thought process doesn't bode well in that environment, and that type of environment is becoming more common in leaps and bounds. And you know what? The people writing code there know how computers work. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
"Devil's advocate... so what? Storage is basically free now." Here's so what: It's like Scotty said "The *more* they overthink the *plumbing*, the easier it is to stop up the drain." On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 2:28 PM, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
where an operating system requires billions of bytes of RAM just to boot.
Devil's advocate... so what? Storage is basically free now.
Dean, Evan doesn't get the Star Trek reference... LOL On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 2:33 PM, Dean Notarnicola via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
"Devil's advocate... so what? Storage is basically free now."
Here's so what: It's like Scotty said "The *more* they overthink the *plumbing*, the easier it is to stop up the drain."
On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 2:28 PM, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
where an operating system requires billions of bytes of RAM just to boot.
Devil's advocate... so what? Storage is basically free now.
Dean, Evan doesn't get the Star Trek reference... LOL On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 2:33 PM, Dean Notarnicola via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
"Devil's advocate... so what? Storage is basically free now."
Here's so what: It's like Scotty said "The *more* they overthink the *plumbing*, the easier it is to stop up the drain."
One of the best lines ever On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 2:34 PM, Chris Fala via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
Dean, Evan doesn't get the Star Trek reference... LOL
On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 2:33 PM, Dean Notarnicola via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
"Devil's advocate... so what? Storage is basically free now."
Here's so what: It's like Scotty said "The *more* they overthink the *plumbing*, the easier it is to stop up the drain."
On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 2:28 PM, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
where an operating system requires billions of bytes of RAM just to boot.
Devil's advocate... so what? Storage is basically free now.
Dean, Evan doesn't get the Star Trek reference... LOL
Sure I do. It has to do with the Force and the Battlestar Galactica. Back to the subject. I'd be interested in seeing how the percentage of college freshman choosing the EE major changes over time for the past few decades.
From: Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> To: vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> Cc: Evan Koblentz <evan@snarc.net> Sent: Tuesday, June 7, 2016 2:39 PM Subject: Re: [vcf-midatlantic] OT: people don't understand computers anymore
Dean, Evan doesn't get the Star Trek reference... LOL
Sure I do. It has to do with the Force and the Battlestar Galactica. Back to the subject. I'd be interested in seeing how the percentage of college freshman choosing the EE major changes over time for the past few decades. ---The college I went to (NC State Univ) offers a CPE (Computer Engineering) degree that (at least was) a simple hybrid of CSC & EE... so you got the fun stufffrom both. :) cb
"How many people knew the hacking that went into making Atari 2600 games actually work? And it's pretty amazing they even did work, if you look at the architecture of that thing." Exactly. And how many of today's programmers would be able to effectively program even that relatively simple hardware? On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 2:33 PM, Dean Notarnicola <dnotarnicola@gmail.com> wrote:
"Devil's advocate... so what? Storage is basically free now."
Here's so what: It's like Scotty said "The *more* they overthink the *plumbing*, the easier it is to stop up the drain."
On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 2:28 PM, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
where an operating system requires billions of bytes of RAM just to boot.
Devil's advocate... so what? Storage is basically free now.
Efficiency, reliability. On Tue, Jun 7, 2016 at 2:28 PM, Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic < vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> wrote:
where an operating system requires billions of bytes of RAM just to boot.
Devil's advocate... so what? Storage is basically free now.
Evan Koblentz wrote:
where an operating system requires billions of bytes of RAM just to boot.
Devil's advocate... so what? Storage is basically free now.
Next time we're at a bar together, you're buying your own drinks bucko. ;-) Bill S.
-----Original Message----- From: vcf-midatlantic [mailto:vcf-midatlantic- bounces@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org] On Behalf Of Evan Koblentz via vcf-midatlantic Sent: 07 June 2016 19:29 To: vcf-midatlantic <vcf-midatlantic@lists.vintagecomputerfederation.org> Cc: Evan Koblentz <evan@snarc.net> Subject: Re: [vcf-midatlantic] OT: people don't understand computers anymore
where an operating system requires billions of bytes of RAM just to boot.
Devil's advocate... so what? Storage is basically free now.
I am sorry to say but its not "Only" computers. So a year or two ago my son asked "how do you tune a car to go faster". My answer was, in the past you might have :- 1. Polished the manifolds to allow faster air flow. 2. Fitted bigger valves to improve air flow. 3. Fitted a better carburettor to get more fuel into the engine. 4. Changed to a "sports cam" for improved air and fuel. 5. Fitted a sports exhaust. 6. If really serious bore it out or fit a crank shaft with a longer stroke to increase cubic capacity 7. Fit High Compression Pistons.... Of course these days you just change the chip in the Engine Management Unit.... ... but the same goes for other technologies, e.g. Radio and TV. I could, if I wanted to build a color TV or an FM Stereo radio using basic components. I could not build a digital TV or Radio because the software involved is now so complex that I no longer have the skills to understand it. The problem is that the level of skill needed to understand the technology TOTALLY is now so high that folks can no longer do this. You talked about CS graduates and low level constructs, but at the next level up how many understand that Windows at least is still a message switch. Mostly they don't need to know and don't know.... Dave G4UGM
On 06/07/2016 03:17 PM, Dave Wade via vcf-midatlantic wrote:
I am sorry to say but its not "Only" computers. So a year or two ago my son asked "how do you tune a car to go faster".
My answer was, in the past you might have :-
1. Polished the manifolds to allow faster air flow. 2. Fitted bigger valves to improve air flow. 3. Fitted a better carburettor to get more fuel into the engine. 4. Changed to a "sports cam" for improved air and fuel. 5. Fitted a sports exhaust. 6. If really serious bore it out or fit a crank shaft with a longer stroke to increase cubic capacity 7. Fit High Compression Pistons....
Of course these days you just change the chip in the Engine Management Unit....
Yes. But the (possibly) interesting thing is, you could STILL do things 1 through 7 in your list above, and make the car go faster. As long as the engine control computer didn't "compensate" for what you'd done, of course. There's still a low-tech gas-burning engine under there somewhere. The same holds for computers. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
(reply stuck in the middle of the thread, no particular reason) Being one who currently slings code for a living, I have the following observations: - There are more job openings for "computer programming" than there are dedicated, serious computer scientists - People are attracted to these jobs because they pay well - A deep understanding of CS is not required for many of these jobs (e.g. DB management, web design) - Using a computer scientist as a code monkey is probably not fulfilling or economic Thus, you have a lot of "computer people" who are there driving an industry that uses computers as a means to make money. They don't need to know how the server they deploy to or the workstation they use actually *works* because it's irrelevant to their job. For many people, their interest in computers stops with what's immediately relevant to their jobs. That's fine, not every lathe operator needs to understand the chemistry and physics behind the alloy he's working into whatever the final bit will be. The ones who *do* care about what's happening at a low level are naturally going to want to learn more, and often do. Those people end up moving from code monkey to something else, into management or software architecture or something. Or they quit and work for themselves in a more involved field. That's good too, because now the really motivated and interested people are the ones responsible for making decisions, and guiding the people who don't really have an interest in what they're doing outside of making a living. I do think most CS tracks at university would benefit from starting at the low level and working up. This would probably require splitting the current batch of CS students into two different programs: actual CS, and Computer Programming. Now, w.r.t. high-level languages and waste of computer resources: because of bulletin point #1 above, for general purpose computing, the *programmer's* time *is* more valuable than the computer's time, nowadays. That is an inescapable fact for many jobs. Underlying architecture has no bearing and *should* have no bearing on, for example, how well someone's web application accomplishes its task. Likewise, for quick and/or one-off tasks efficiency often isn't important. If the time to improve the code is longer than the run time, and the results are equally correct, it's not cost effective. That *does* matter. If efficiency *is* important, that requirement will eventually reveal itself (again, general purpose computing, not talking about HPC or embedded work). When that happens, someone will make a (hopefully informed) decision on whether to throw hardware at the problem, or take the time to do it right. Sometimes more hardware is the answer. Often it isn't, and that was a lot of the contract work we received at my previous salaried job. Thanks, Jonathan
participants (8)
-
Bill Sudbrink -
Chris Fala -
Christopher Blackmon -
Dave McGuire -
Dave Wade -
Dean Notarnicola -
Evan Koblentz -
Systems Glitch