5 ms·

Of course 32MB of ram isn't enough to hold the frame buffer for an HD screen, let alone multiple 4K monitors. Even if you did have all those pixels worth of me

Of course 32MB of ram isn't enough to hold the frame buffer for an HD screen, let alone multiple 4K monitors. Even if you did have all those pixels worth of memory, the idea that the CPU could reasonably render a nice crisp UI with gradients at any reasonable FPS is lauaghable. You're talking about an era where the idea of leaving a PC on overnight and expecting it to be usable in the morning w/out a reboot was a foolish pipe dream - I discovered linux because I couldn't even get windows 95 to stay stay running for a few hours without seeing BSOD. Point of all this being: the notion that those apps were somehow better is rosy nostalgia at best. Yes a lot of apps today suck, but so did a lot of apps back then - generally the ones that suck these days suck less, and even if they are complete trash, they almost never bring the whole OS down with them. If the cost of that is taking advantage of the fact that my computer came with 1000x as much memory, so what? That 32GB in my desktop isn't even used all the way by FS cache + games + whatever else is running, why does it matter what the number of bytes used by any single app is?

rob74 4y ago
Ok, granted, screens today are more hi-res, and use transparency and other shader effects that weren't available in 1995. Also, VS Code is a much more advanced IDE than Visual Basic 4 or Delphi 2 (although you could design a UI graphically with the latter two, but not with the former). But my general point still stands: the applications today aren't 1000 times better than in 1995 (except possibly games), so why do they need 1000 times more memory?
- sophacles 4y ago
  Wait, you're seriously proposing that memory usage and quality should have a directly linear relationship? (ignoring the fact that 1000x "better" is a purely subjective measure that even people with similar tastes have extreme difficulty in quantifying). Keep in mind that most of those apps you are talking about were designed with 256 color palletes (or smaller!) in mind. Just moving to true color triples the rendering target buffer without any other change. The same proportion of a screen used by the same app in HD vs 640p is another factor of ~9. (a lot more for 4k, etc). Word size is 2x larger - every pointer and int takes twice as many bytes. Depending on the native endcoding of your OS, strings can take 2-4x as many bytes, because it turns out there are languages besides English that have different letters. All of the above are just mechanical changes in the underlying gear that require a significant portion of your 1000x factor. Other things go into to it too but they are dev choices: * responsiveness due to keeping more in RAM rather than waiting for disk io * (related to disk io) fetching resources from the network is very slow too, so keeping them in memory is a good idea. * spending a huge effort minimizing RAM usage is often a waste of effort, given that the machine will have far more memory - this has made your free/cheap app possible (more so considering a 1995 dollar is ~2 2022 dollars). * The little features most users (maybe even you) take for granted all cost memory and cpu, and those are not present in the old software. * In general the software today does more anyway - even ignoring the convenience features, this also has a cost. I notice you have yet to answer my question: So what? Why does that matter when machines come with more RAM than I can use even with the increase in memory usage?
  - hulitu 4y ago
    > * responsiveness due to keeping more in RAM rather than waiting for disk io Excel , word, etc are much slower. It seems that although they keep some things in RAM they need to report to mothership.
- bluedino 4y ago
  I was just thinking about how much faster and less cluttered things like Word and Excel were back then. Office 2000 vs whatever version we are on now.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
virgulino 4y ago
>Of course 32MB of ram isn't enough to hold the frame buffer for an HD screen, let alone multiple 4K monitors. Actually, it's exactly right for a 4k framebuffer: 3840*2160*4/1024/1024 ~= 31.6MB. 8-)
- sophacles 4y ago
  You're right, my search history shows i did 4*1920*1080*4 :facepalm:

rob74 4y ago

Ok, granted, screens today are more hi-res, and use transparency and other shader effects that weren't available in 1995. Also, VS Code is a much more advanced IDE than Visual Basic 4 or Delphi 2 (although you could design a UI graphically with the latter two, but not with the former). But my general point still stands: the applications today aren't 1000 times better than in 1995 (except possibly games), so why do they need 1000 times more memory?

sophacles 4y ago
Wait, you're seriously proposing that memory usage and quality should have a directly linear relationship? (ignoring the fact that 1000x "better" is a purely subjective measure that even people with similar tastes have extreme difficulty in quantifying). Keep in mind that most of those apps you are talking about were designed with 256 color palletes (or smaller!) in mind. Just moving to true color triples the rendering target buffer without any other change. The same proportion of a screen used by the same app in HD vs 640p is another factor of ~9. (a lot more for 4k, etc). Word size is 2x larger - every pointer and int takes twice as many bytes. Depending on the native endcoding of your OS, strings can take 2-4x as many bytes, because it turns out there are languages besides English that have different letters. All of the above are just mechanical changes in the underlying gear that require a significant portion of your 1000x factor. Other things go into to it too but they are dev choices: * responsiveness due to keeping more in RAM rather than waiting for disk io * (related to disk io) fetching resources from the network is very slow too, so keeping them in memory is a good idea. * spending a huge effort minimizing RAM usage is often a waste of effort, given that the machine will have far more memory - this has made your free/cheap app possible (more so considering a 1995 dollar is ~2 2022 dollars). * The little features most users (maybe even you) take for granted all cost memory and cpu, and those are not present in the old software. * In general the software today does more anyway - even ignoring the convenience features, this also has a cost. I notice you have yet to answer my question: So what? Why does that matter when machines come with more RAM than I can use even with the increase in memory usage?
- hulitu 4y ago
  > * responsiveness due to keeping more in RAM rather than waiting for disk io Excel , word, etc are much slower. It seems that although they keep some things in RAM they need to report to mothership.
bluedino 4y ago
I was just thinking about how much faster and less cluttered things like Word and Excel were back then. Office 2000 vs whatever version we are on now.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

virgulino 4y ago

>Of course 32MB of ram isn't enough to hold the frame buffer for an HD screen, let alone multiple 4K monitors. Actually, it's exactly right for a 4k framebuffer: 3840*2160*4/1024/1024 ~= 31.6MB. 8-)

sophacles 4y ago
You're right, my search history shows i did 4*1920*1080*4 :facepalm: