Computer Inventor Finds Computers "Annoying"

[brendano257]

"Our machines were lean and efficient," he said. "The sad thing is that today's computers totally abuse their memory--totally wasteful, you have to wait for the damn things to boot up, just appalling designs. Absolute mess! So dreadful it's heartbreaking." --

So quit whinning and FIX IT.

Honestly, if you don't like it then try to fix it. I mean I know that technology is sometimes confusing and time consuming of course, but really, it's the modern world. I understand it wastes time, I myself can avoid doing homework with just my phone and facebook, but I wish I didn't always have that option. I think this guy is just cranky that his invention isn't king and someone made something "better." (depending on opinion of course)

 

[Mach5Motorsport]

Sinclair again raises the point about bloated code.

 

[dwizar]

The referenced computer was the TRS-80 not the TSR-80.

The first Sinclairs were available in kit form at a substantial savings. The programming was via machine code whose instructions were on the keys of the keyboard which sped up typing the code in a bit. This was more helpful at the time of launch because there was no way to save your program other than using a cassette. You had to press record and then tell the computer to dump the code. Retrieving the code was by rewinding, pressing play and telling the computer to load. This was hit or miss but at least there was a verify process.

You could call this simple but I think what we have now is much simpler and certainly more reliable.

The shape of the original Sinclair made it useful later as a doorstop.

Cassette recording was very popular for some time. The first IBM PCs had cassette ports on the back which looked like a second keyboard port.

 

[bystander]

It may be true that todays software is very bloated and unoptimized, but software today is also expodentially more complex than it was back then. It's huge, it does so much more and requires much more manpower than ever to create.

We could double and triple the costs of software, and they could optimize it more, but with memory being so much cheaper to purchase than the costs to code more effeciently, it doesn't make economic sense to do so.

 

[Guest]

Sir old fart has got it right about todays programming practices, just awful bloated code ridden with bugs. To think that most kernal code is programmed in C instead of assembly just goes to show companies dedication to their hardware, which is very low. Of course tomorrow they will release something slightly better which needs to sell so why bother perfecting yesterdays product. Our OSes are perfect candidates for slick machine code, since they do so much work, but today its not the case. Bloat code is here to stay, and has sold more cpu, gpu, and memory upgrades than anything else combined.
I had a ZX81 back when I was a kid, learned its BASIC, my first programming language.
Sir old pants should keep his PC on sleep, this way when it wakes up in under 3 sec, you got your web browsing where you left it, your file explorers with your folders open, skype back up, utorrent downloading, email open, virtual machines back up, winamp playing tunes, all ready to go

 

[randomizer]

There is little point programming in Assembly when modern compilers will produce code that equals or outperforms most assembly (especially by novice-intermediate programmers) without requiring 20x the effort to write the code. Assembly is all but useless except where precise control over certain instructions is needed.

 

[blackmancer]

[citation][nom]hakesterman[/nom]He maybe the inventor of computers, but they do far more now than he ever invisioned. The Pcnow is far more complicated and requires a totally different mindset. The Pc he made was practiacallyuseless, but his idea was terrific.[/citation]

please, like you could ever know what this guy envisioned. and secondly PC's are only complicated due to their poor design. and thirdly you can thank shmucks like Bill Gates for making software so that "evolves" (#cough#can't program#use customers as testers)

 

[Guest]

I find this guy annoying. He says their old machines were lean and efficient -- yes they did nothing compared to computers today.

 

[Guest]

I guess by nothing you mean they did only the central core tasks such as Word Processing, Spreadsheets, Dial-Up Modem file transfers, Printing.

Well I guess that's not nothing, actually.

If the fact that (for example) a word processor could run from a 720k floppy disk and still have space for documents on the disk is what the guy meant by lean and efficient well, I guess that's not nothing either.