3 ms·
Programmer's time is expensive and RAM is cheap. Back when RAM was $25 per KILObyte*, that saying was reversed. "Programmer's time is cheap and RAM is horribly
by simonblack 4y ago
Programmer's time is expensive and RAM is cheap.
Back when RAM was $25 per KILObyte*, that saying was reversed. "Programmer's time is cheap and RAM is horribly expensive." Especially when there were hard limits to the RAM as in 8-bit computing where the hard limit was 64 kilobytes of contiguous RAM. Programmers used to sweat over saving bits, even, hence the packed-data systems where you might fit (say) 3-bytes of data into two bytes by squeezing out redundant bits.
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* That doesn't sound particularly expensive till you compare it with today's costs. $25 per KiLObyte = $25,000 per MEGAbyte = $25 MILLION BUCKS per GIGAbyte.
Seeing my current computer that I'm writing this on has 32 gigabytes of RAM, that amount of RAM would have cost me Eight Hundred Million (non-inflation-adjusted) Bucks back in 1980. (And I haven't bothered to adjust with the 'kilo' = 1024 factor out of pure laziness)