6 ms·

I'm a proponent of minimalist software design (I wish Plan 9 had won!), but I frankly can't figure out what the author is trying to say. I'm not knowledgeable a

I'm a proponent of minimalist software design (I wish Plan 9 had won!), but I frankly can't figure out what the author is trying to say. I'm not knowledgeable about the Futurist movement, but I can't see what it might have to say about software design. And I completely lost interest when I got to the bullet point “Structured programming = slow”. My Linux laptop boots in about 20 seconds. CRT TV's took longer than that to warm up. Maybe I over-value coherence.

jcranmer 4y ago
Oh, don't worry, they have a list of boot times: > Television - 3 seconds > Automobile - 2 seconds > Microwave oven - less than 1 second > Video game - less than 1 second > Unix workstation - 120 seconds or more Yeah, those times are bullshit. Please tell me what platform has a video game boot in less than a second, because it hasn't been true for any generation of console I've played on (which dates back to the Sega Genesis). This feels like it was written around 1995 (the newest reference is 1994, and the "hot new technology" they're shitting on is C++, which suggests that Java hasn't come out yet). There's a general smug air of "real programmers use assembly." For bonus points, they also criticize computer scientists on the basis of "most NEW ideas are feared and rejected", which is honestly a pretty good summary of the diatribe.
- deafpolygon 4y ago
  Ha. Thanks for mentioning video games in 1 second. I was wondering what universe had video games booting in 1 second, because I'd like to get in on that.
  - jandrese 4y ago
    Given the rest of the paper it's probably referring to the SNES and Genesis, which is about right.
    - deafpolygon 4y ago
      I don't know. I count the logo loading screen (i.e. Sonic the Hedgehog had an incoming "Sega!" announcer and logo, which is at least 2-3 seconds). It's much faster than the loading times of current consoles, but not 1 second. NES might qualify, as it often "loaded" (turned on) right into the title screen.
      - whstl 4y ago
        Is there really any "loading" going on, or is that just a branding screen? Those consoles use ROM chips that were fast enough, and the Genesis, for example, only had 64 KB of RAM, so there wasn't even the need or possibility for "loading" a lot of things into the RAM like today, nor was the CPU fast enough to compute anything during boot that couldn't be pre-loaded into the ROM. I also remember some of those being totally skippable as well, not only in the Genesis but also in other consoles. On the Neo Geo, for example (same CPU as the Genesis, 68000), putting a coin completely skips the (kinda long) 7 second logo intro.
      - yellowapple 4y ago
        > I count the logo loading screen That's a pretty unfair metric, then, considering that said delay is entirely artificial and is part of the game itself.
      - aflag 4y ago
        What actually happens while the logo is showing? Is that really a loading screen or does it always have to be there for contract reasons?
        deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - junon 4y ago
    N64 booted immediately. Popping Yoshi Story in and hitting that switch gives you an immediate "NEN-TAYN-DOU" in the voice of a small army of Yoshis. I'd say it boots in under a second.
  - flohofwoe 4y ago
    Any cartridge-based game console before CD-ROMs became popular did that (at the cost of smaller game worlds, obviously). The cartridges contained ROM chips which were directly 'bank-switched' into the CPU address space instead of providing a 'filesystem' to load from.
  - hjkl0 4y ago
    Basically every console before Xbox and PlayStation loaded games in seconds. That’s not because of better software though. Games were just so much smaller then. So if a 128k game loads in less than a second, and the 4.7G DVD version of the same game takes 30 seconds, I would probably wait 30 seconds for the DVD version.
- mLuby 4y ago
  From the user's perspective, a PS5 appears to launch the most recently played game in about 1 second. A better word would probably be "resuming" than "booting."
  - pprotas 4y ago
    By that logic resuming the “unix workstation” from sleep is <1 second
- Arch485 4y ago
  My NES will boot games in < 1 second (at least when it was new - nowadays I have to fiddle with the buttons a bit)
- greenhatman 4y ago
  Minesweeper open instantly.
  - AlecSchueler 4y ago
    It's running on top of an already booted OS, though maybe that's what the author had in mind.
    - TeMPOraL 4y ago
      I think the point here isn't about how quickly videogames or consoles boot, but rather that if your program takes longer to start than a significantly more complicated videogame from the same era, then you're doing it wrong, and as a result wasting your users' time. It's a view I shared in the past - it held throughout the entire "desktop computing era", until consoles and PCs started to converge, and the asset bundle size of a typical game inflated rapidly.
- flohofwoe 4y ago
  Back when video games came on ROM cartridges (before CD-ROMS), there would be no 'loading process' at all since all data is already mapped into memory. There may be a couple of logos at startup, but that's just wasting user time, not to hide any 'loading'. The fact that game consoles have become more and more like PCs in terms of user experience over the decades is actually pretty sad.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
  I mean, isn't that kind of the problem? The technology of yesteryear was orders of magnitude slower and less resourceful, but today many tasks take orders of magnitude more time and resources for not even close to an order of magnitude more utility.
- mmphosis 4y ago
  8-bit computers: instant on to command prompt READY. computers get a floppy disk drive: boot from floppy disk wait for command prompt DOS VERSION 3.3 computers get a hard disk and can store more stuff like startup scripts: boot hard disk, startup script runs, wait longer for command prompt C:\> computers get Graphical Operating Systems: startup screen, wait for desktop to load, wait even longer to open a command prompt program $ computers can be multi-user: start up screen, wait for desktop to load, login, wait even a bit longer to open a command prompt program Password: computers and the internet are ubiquitous: start up screen, wait for desktop to load, login, get distracted by web browser, forget to open the command prompt program www tiny devices are everywhere: the battery in my phone is dead.
082349872349872 4y ago
The Futurists were over-the-top (and sometimes more typographically out-there than this web page, in a pre-DTP time!) so I highly doubt the page is meant to be taken entirely seriously. cf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurist_cooking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurist_cooking or http://www.designhistory.org/Avant_Garde_pages/Futurism.html http://www.designhistory.org/Avant_Garde_pages/Futurism.html
- Daub 4y ago
  Yep. There is (in my opinion) a genealogical line that connects Futurism to Dada to Punk. Certainly their typography presents very similarly. In spirit, they all spent a lot of energy rejecting the status quo and not much in developing alternatives.
- jonjacky 4y ago
  The original Futurist Manifesto (1909) [1] is indeed over-the-top and out-there. Much more about them in Wikipedia [2]. I don't see the connection between those original Futurists and the linked Futurist Programming article, maybe none was intended. 1. https://www.societyforasianart.org/sites/default/files/manifesto_futurista.pdf https://www.societyforasianart.org/sites/default/files/manif... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurism
flohofwoe 4y ago
> ...about 20 seconds. CRT TV's took longer than that to warm up You must have had a very crappy CRT TV :) A good TV (or CRT computer monitor) was available near-instantly, and also switched channels much faster than a modern 'digital' TV.
TeMPOraL 4y ago
What kind of TVs did you have? The CRT TVs I remember in the 1990s and 2000s all "booted" in 1-3 seconds from no power to displaying proper image. The flat-ish and flat TVs that came later also booted comparably quickly. It's only when Smart TVs appeared that I first saw a TV taking more than 5 seconds to start. (I'm counting the time it took a TV to show broadcast programming or "normal" cable programming. IIRC cable decoder boxes would introduce some extra delay here for "cold start", but those boxes were all shitty garbage from the same kind of companies that now sell smart TVs, and we didn't use them anyway.)
- whstl 4y ago
  Yep. I remember analog cable/satellite decoder boxes and even the first-generation digital ones being almost instantaneous too. It was only when they became more like a computer that it started going down. When they started getting remote updates it became a nightmare. The set-top box I had before cord-cutting was "always on", and consumed quite a lot of power even when "turned off". It was extremely hot all day. Pulling the plug off the wall when not using was enough to save money, but then it take a full minute to power on, and then it had to wait for something from the satellite. I eventually bought a timer so it would turn on at 8am.

jcranmer 4y ago

Oh, don't worry, they have a list of boot times: > Television - 3 seconds > Automobile - 2 seconds > Microwave oven - less than 1 second > Video game - less than 1 second > Unix workstation - 120 seconds or more Yeah, those times are bullshit. Please tell me what platform has a video game boot in less than a second, because it hasn't been true for any generation of console I've played on (which dates back to the Sega Genesis). This feels like it was written around 1995 (the newest reference is 1994, and the "hot new technology" they're shitting on is C++, which suggests that Java hasn't come out yet). There's a general smug air of "real programmers use assembly." For bonus points, they also criticize computer scientists on the basis of "most NEW ideas are feared and rejected", which is honestly a pretty good summary of the diatribe.

deafpolygon 4y ago
Ha. Thanks for mentioning video games in 1 second. I was wondering what universe had video games booting in 1 second, because I'd like to get in on that.
- jandrese 4y ago
  Given the rest of the paper it's probably referring to the SNES and Genesis, which is about right.
  - deafpolygon 4y ago
    I don't know. I count the logo loading screen (i.e. Sonic the Hedgehog had an incoming "Sega!" announcer and logo, which is at least 2-3 seconds). It's much faster than the loading times of current consoles, but not 1 second. NES might qualify, as it often "loaded" (turned on) right into the title screen.
    - whstl 4y ago
      Is there really any "loading" going on, or is that just a branding screen? Those consoles use ROM chips that were fast enough, and the Genesis, for example, only had 64 KB of RAM, so there wasn't even the need or possibility for "loading" a lot of things into the RAM like today, nor was the CPU fast enough to compute anything during boot that couldn't be pre-loaded into the ROM. I also remember some of those being totally skippable as well, not only in the Genesis but also in other consoles. On the Neo Geo, for example (same CPU as the Genesis, 68000), putting a coin completely skips the (kinda long) 7 second logo intro.
    - yellowapple 4y ago
      > I count the logo loading screen That's a pretty unfair metric, then, considering that said delay is entirely artificial and is part of the game itself.
    - aflag 4y ago
      What actually happens while the logo is showing? Is that really a loading screen or does it always have to be there for contract reasons?
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
- junon 4y ago
  N64 booted immediately. Popping Yoshi Story in and hitting that switch gives you an immediate "NEN-TAYN-DOU" in the voice of a small army of Yoshis. I'd say it boots in under a second.
- flohofwoe 4y ago
  Any cartridge-based game console before CD-ROMs became popular did that (at the cost of smaller game worlds, obviously). The cartridges contained ROM chips which were directly 'bank-switched' into the CPU address space instead of providing a 'filesystem' to load from.
- hjkl0 4y ago
  Basically every console before Xbox and PlayStation loaded games in seconds. That’s not because of better software though. Games were just so much smaller then. So if a 128k game loads in less than a second, and the 4.7G DVD version of the same game takes 30 seconds, I would probably wait 30 seconds for the DVD version.
mLuby 4y ago
From the user's perspective, a PS5 appears to launch the most recently played game in about 1 second. A better word would probably be "resuming" than "booting."
- pprotas 4y ago
  By that logic resuming the “unix workstation” from sleep is <1 second
Arch485 4y ago
My NES will boot games in < 1 second (at least when it was new - nowadays I have to fiddle with the buttons a bit)
greenhatman 4y ago
Minesweeper open instantly.
- AlecSchueler 4y ago
  It's running on top of an already booted OS, though maybe that's what the author had in mind.
  - TeMPOraL 4y ago
    I think the point here isn't about how quickly videogames or consoles boot, but rather that if your program takes longer to start than a significantly more complicated videogame from the same era, then you're doing it wrong, and as a result wasting your users' time. It's a view I shared in the past - it held throughout the entire "desktop computing era", until consoles and PCs started to converge, and the asset bundle size of a typical game inflated rapidly.
flohofwoe 4y ago
Back when video games came on ROM cartridges (before CD-ROMS), there would be no 'loading process' at all since all data is already mapped into memory. There may be a couple of logos at startup, but that's just wasting user time, not to hide any 'loading'. The fact that game consoles have become more and more like PCs in terms of user experience over the decades is actually pretty sad.
AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
I mean, isn't that kind of the problem? The technology of yesteryear was orders of magnitude slower and less resourceful, but today many tasks take orders of magnitude more time and resources for not even close to an order of magnitude more utility.
mmphosis 4y ago
8-bit computers: instant on to command prompt READY. computers get a floppy disk drive: boot from floppy disk wait for command prompt DOS VERSION 3.3 computers get a hard disk and can store more stuff like startup scripts: boot hard disk, startup script runs, wait longer for command prompt C:\> computers get Graphical Operating Systems: startup screen, wait for desktop to load, wait even longer to open a command prompt program $ computers can be multi-user: start up screen, wait for desktop to load, login, wait even a bit longer to open a command prompt program Password: computers and the internet are ubiquitous: start up screen, wait for desktop to load, login, get distracted by web browser, forget to open the command prompt program www tiny devices are everywhere: the battery in my phone is dead.

082349872349872 4y ago

The Futurists were over-the-top (and sometimes more typographically out-there than this web page, in a pre-DTP time!) so I highly doubt the page is meant to be taken entirely seriously. cf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurist_cooking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurist_cooking or http://www.designhistory.org/Avant_Garde_pages/Futurism.html http://www.designhistory.org/Avant_Garde_pages/Futurism.html

Daub 4y ago
Yep. There is (in my opinion) a genealogical line that connects Futurism to Dada to Punk. Certainly their typography presents very similarly. In spirit, they all spent a lot of energy rejecting the status quo and not much in developing alternatives.
jonjacky 4y ago
The original Futurist Manifesto (1909) [1] is indeed over-the-top and out-there. Much more about them in Wikipedia [2]. I don't see the connection between those original Futurists and the linked Futurist Programming article, maybe none was intended. 1. https://www.societyforasianart.org/sites/default/files/manifesto_futurista.pdf https://www.societyforasianart.org/sites/default/files/manif... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurism

flohofwoe 4y ago

> ...about 20 seconds. CRT TV's took longer than that to warm up You must have had a very crappy CRT TV :) A good TV (or CRT computer monitor) was available near-instantly, and also switched channels much faster than a modern 'digital' TV.

TeMPOraL 4y ago

What kind of TVs did you have? The CRT TVs I remember in the 1990s and 2000s all "booted" in 1-3 seconds from no power to displaying proper image. The flat-ish and flat TVs that came later also booted comparably quickly. It's only when Smart TVs appeared that I first saw a TV taking more than 5 seconds to start. (I'm counting the time it took a TV to show broadcast programming or "normal" cable programming. IIRC cable decoder boxes would introduce some extra delay here for "cold start", but those boxes were all shitty garbage from the same kind of companies that now sell smart TVs, and we didn't use them anyway.)

whstl 4y ago
Yep. I remember analog cable/satellite decoder boxes and even the first-generation digital ones being almost instantaneous too. It was only when they became more like a computer that it started going down. When they started getting remote updates it became a nightmare. The set-top box I had before cord-cutting was "always on", and consumed quite a lot of power even when "turned off". It was extremely hot all day. Pulling the plug off the wall when not using was enough to save money, but then it take a full minute to power on, and then it had to wait for something from the satellite. I eventually bought a timer so it would turn on at 8am.