4 ms·

I lack the background to understand why big endian patches are required. They're ARM Cortex chips, they support little endian, right? Why would you use big endi

I lack the background to understand why big endian patches are required. They're ARM Cortex chips, they support little endian, right? Why would you use big endian?

johnklos 5y ago
The world isn't simply filled with people who are content to do the same thing as everyone else. For some, it's purely aesthetic. For others, it's preferred to have an environment where software that makes bad assumptions won't work. For many, it's at least partly just because we can. Not everyone does things just because everyone else does them. If that were the case, we'd all be running Windows. Some people do things because it's what everyone else isn't doing.
- IntelMiner 5y ago
  That doesn't really answer the question. But the philosophical puff piece is 'appreciated'
  - scintill76 5y ago
    I thought of it as the voiceover to a Super Bowl commercial — traditionally car commercial, but these days it would be for crypto.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    Software that makes bad assumptions tends to fail on in a million times on 'normal' systems, but everytime on others. Driving those one in a million cases out makes everything a lot more reliable for us all.
pengaru 5y ago
Sometimes people use oddball architectures specifically for the purpose of exercising the portability considerations in the source and/or build process. It tends to uncover bugs otherwise unnoticed, or just shortcomings in the abstractions. There doesn't need to be any sort of runtime benefit to make it a useful exercise.
- electroly 5y ago
  I hadn't quite caught that this was replacing a SunBlade 2500. I get it now -- he bought this board specifically to work on big endian support, and was already doing that work on the SunBlade. I had misunderstood this to be someone getting a board for some other purpose and just choosing to run in big endian mode for fun.

4 ms·

I lack the background to understand why big endian patches are required. They're ARM Cortex chips, they support little endian, right? Why would you use big endi

by electroly 5y ago

I lack the background to understand why big endian patches are required. They're ARM Cortex chips, they support little endian, right? Why would you use big endian?

johnklos 5y ago
The world isn't simply filled with people who are content to do the same thing as everyone else. For some, it's purely aesthetic. For others, it's preferred to have an environment where software that makes bad assumptions won't work. For many, it's at least partly just because we can. Not everyone does things just because everyone else does them. If that were the case, we'd all be running Windows. Some people do things because it's what everyone else isn't doing.
- IntelMiner 5y ago
  That doesn't really answer the question. But the philosophical puff piece is 'appreciated'
  - scintill76 5y ago
    I thought of it as the voiceover to a Super Bowl commercial — traditionally car commercial, but these days it would be for crypto.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    Software that makes bad assumptions tends to fail on in a million times on 'normal' systems, but everytime on others. Driving those one in a million cases out makes everything a lot more reliable for us all.
pengaru 5y ago
Sometimes people use oddball architectures specifically for the purpose of exercising the portability considerations in the source and/or build process. It tends to uncover bugs otherwise unnoticed, or just shortcomings in the abstractions. There doesn't need to be any sort of runtime benefit to make it a useful exercise.
- electroly 5y ago
  I hadn't quite caught that this was replacing a SunBlade 2500. I get it now -- he bought this board specifically to work on big endian support, and was already doing that work on the SunBlade. I had misunderstood this to be someone getting a board for some other purpose and just choosing to run in big endian mode for fun.