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> We're used to things getting better quickly when it comes to technology. It doesn't help that some influential people in the software industry, like Joel Spo
by mwcampbell 11y ago
> We're used to things getting better quickly when it comes to technology.
It doesn't help that some influential people in the software industry, like Joel Spolsky, told us to bet on the hardware improving fast. See for example:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/09/18.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/09/18.html
Particularly this part:
> a couple of companies, including Microsoft and Apple, noticed (just a little bit sooner than anyone else) that Moore’s Law meant that they shouldn’t think too hard about performance and memory usage… just build cool stuff, and wait for the hardware to catch up. Microsoft first shipped Excel for Windows when 80386s were too expensive to buy, but they were patient. Within a couple of years, the 80386SX came out, and anybody who could afford a $1500 clone could run Excel.
By contrast, he describes Lotus optimizing 1-2-3 so it could run in 640K of memory. Who would want to be today's equivalent of Lotus? So just pump out features and wait for the hardware to catch up, right?