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No, that's not how it went. People were not stupid and lacking any foresight in the past. Constrained storage space has been a concern since Charles Babbage's a
by ajnin 4y ago
No, that's not how it went. People were not stupid and lacking any foresight in the past. Constrained storage space has been a concern since Charles Babbage's analytical engine, that is since forever in computing. No one ever thought let's stop at 16 bit pointers or whatever and it will be enough for the rest of time. It's an engineering tradeoff to make the best of the technology available at the time. Pointer sizes are not just a number, they correspond to realities down to the electronics and physical design of your system. Longer pointers mean larger address bus, larger registers, more transistors on your chip that won't be available for something else. They are more wasteful if you don't actually have that much memory to address. It's incredibly naive to think today's standards were even a possibility decades ago.
- Alupis 4y ago> No, that's not how it went. People were not stupid and lacking any foresight in the past It truly is in so many cases. Not stupidity, but perhaps hubris. The same hubris that says nobody will need more than 64 bits today. Given time, 64 bits will fall waste to 128 bits and more. The people who designed IPv4 truly thought the number of IP's would be more than enough forever. They literally had no concept that one day your average person would own multiple computing devices and require multiple IP's just to get through a normal day. They were very wrong, and found out in only a few year's time. The only constant in tech is our assumptions today will be wrong tomorrow. Assuming "X" is big enough is foolhardy in just about every scenario.
- sroussey 4y agoWell, they had no idea IP was going to be used by consumers full stop.