4 ms·

We laugh at these quotes and yet we keep making them. "640K... nobody would ever need that much memory" "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame." "Well t

We laugh at these quotes and yet we keep making them. "640K... nobody would ever need that much memory" "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame." "Well this is an exceptionally cute idea, but there is absolutely no way that anyone is going to have any faith in this currency." It seems inevitable that despite knowing better we will keep putting our collective foot in our mouth. I'm ok with that. The takeaway is that limiting predictions aren't useful.

B1FF_PSUVM 9y ago
> The takeaway is that limiting predictions aren't useful. Er ... isn't that rather limiting?
throwaway135634 9y ago
Or maybe the takeaway is that most things fail and cherrypicking the times they didn't isn't a real argument
ajross 9y ago
> "640K... nobody would ever need that much memory" The Gates quote was "640k ought to be enough for anybody", and it's been wildly misinterpreted by basically everyone. The IBM PC had already picked the 8088, which had a 20 bit addressing architecture regardless of whether or not 1MB was "enough" or not. The issue Gates was addressing was whether or not DOS's choice of 640 as the barrier for loadable program memory management was enough given that it was only about half the space in the machine. And he wasn't really wrong. The time frame between DOS programs bumping up against 640k and "DOS" programs wanting to use the multiple-megabyte flat spaces available on the 80386 (which couldn't possibly have been architected for in software in 1981) was like three years. If you want to ding DOS, complain not about the 640k limit but about the complete lack of architecture and discipline in the high 384k. Really no one ever got this space under control, and it was a bucketful of undetectable device I/O hazards and too-clever-by-half hackery well into the 90's.
- paulgerhardt 9y ago
  the quote was "When we set the upper limit of PC-DOS at 640K, we thought nobody would ever need that much memory." "640K... nobody would ever need that much memory" was just a contraction https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/09/08/640k-enough/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/09/08/640k-enough/
  - kjs3 9y ago
    Note also that the platform could only address 1M of memory (2^20 bits), so it wasn't the most limiting trade-off considering other concerns.

B1FF_PSUVM 9y ago

> The takeaway is that limiting predictions aren't useful. Er ... isn't that rather limiting?

throwaway135634 9y ago

Or maybe the takeaway is that most things fail and cherrypicking the times they didn't isn't a real argument

ajross 9y ago

> "640K... nobody would ever need that much memory" The Gates quote was "640k ought to be enough for anybody", and it's been wildly misinterpreted by basically everyone. The IBM PC had already picked the 8088, which had a 20 bit addressing architecture regardless of whether or not 1MB was "enough" or not. The issue Gates was addressing was whether or not DOS's choice of 640 as the barrier for loadable program memory management was enough given that it was only about half the space in the machine. And he wasn't really wrong. The time frame between DOS programs bumping up against 640k and "DOS" programs wanting to use the multiple-megabyte flat spaces available on the 80386 (which couldn't possibly have been architected for in software in 1981) was like three years. If you want to ding DOS, complain not about the 640k limit but about the complete lack of architecture and discipline in the high 384k. Really no one ever got this space under control, and it was a bucketful of undetectable device I/O hazards and too-clever-by-half hackery well into the 90's.

paulgerhardt 9y ago
the quote was "When we set the upper limit of PC-DOS at 640K, we thought nobody would ever need that much memory." "640K... nobody would ever need that much memory" was just a contraction https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/09/08/640k-enough/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/09/08/640k-enough/
- kjs3 9y ago
  Note also that the platform could only address 1M of memory (2^20 bits), so it wasn't the most limiting trade-off considering other concerns.