10 ms·

I care. I want to learn the entire thing I'm using, which means I appreciate things that are simpler and faster to learn. You can say I am a stupid or irrationa

by shpx 3y ago

I care. I want to learn the entire thing I'm using, which means I appreciate things that are simpler and faster to learn. You can say I am a stupid or irrational person not worthy of consideration for wanting this but I am who I am and I want to spend money on computers that cater to me.

tedunangst 3y ago
Do you want a computer architecture that replaces and obsoletes everything you've previously learned or one that evolves and adds new features on top?
- solarmist 3y ago
  Either depending on the situation.
bdamm 3y ago
Then you are obviously running OpenBSD on ARM.
jacquesm 3y ago
In that case you should probably not look at x86 at all. It's one of the most convoluted architectures out there, especially because it lugs all of that legacy stuff along.
phendrenad2 3y ago
When people say "who cares?" they generally mean "what non-vanishingly-small percentage of people care?" and I think that's still an unanswered question!
citrin_ru 3y ago
It very similar to chip die space - modern technologies are so complex that to learn how 8086 works is a very small effort compare to learning how the latest intel CPUs work. And emulation of older generations is a small part of this complexity.
- nneonneo 3y ago
  I'd argue that 16-bit mode is conceptually more complicated than modern 64-bit modes, at least for userspace. 64-bit mode has a single flat address space (FS/GS are just opaque offsets into this address space), memory-mapped I/O, and a single system call trap instruction. 16-bit mode has segmentation, I/O ports, multiple trap instructions (and call gates!), address space wraparound...
- shpx 3y ago
  Learning useful things is fun, learning useless things is unpleasant, so in some sense it's more effort.
  - citrin_ru 3y ago
    While working on not always pleasant stuff at paid job as a hobby I sometimes learn 'useless' stuff from the past. For me on average old technologies looks simpler (though not without quirks) and more interesting to learn while modern ones often look over-complicated. Just to clarify - I don't think that Intel should retain 16bit mode, but don't think removing it would make a big difference.

by shpx 3y ago

tedunangst 3y ago

Do you want a computer architecture that replaces and obsoletes everything you've previously learned or one that evolves and adds new features on top?

solarmist 3y ago
Either depending on the situation.

bdamm 3y ago

Then you are obviously running OpenBSD on ARM.

jacquesm 3y ago

In that case you should probably not look at x86 at all. It's one of the most convoluted architectures out there, especially because it lugs all of that legacy stuff along.

phendrenad2 3y ago

When people say "who cares?" they generally mean "what non-vanishingly-small percentage of people care?" and I think that's still an unanswered question!

citrin_ru 3y ago

It very similar to chip die space - modern technologies are so complex that to learn how 8086 works is a very small effort compare to learning how the latest intel CPUs work. And emulation of older generations is a small part of this complexity.

nneonneo 3y ago
I'd argue that 16-bit mode is conceptually more complicated than modern 64-bit modes, at least for userspace. 64-bit mode has a single flat address space (FS/GS are just opaque offsets into this address space), memory-mapped I/O, and a single system call trap instruction. 16-bit mode has segmentation, I/O ports, multiple trap instructions (and call gates!), address space wraparound...
shpx 3y ago
Learning useful things is fun, learning useless things is unpleasant, so in some sense it's more effort.
- citrin_ru 3y ago
  While working on not always pleasant stuff at paid job as a hobby I sometimes learn 'useless' stuff from the past. For me on average old technologies looks simpler (though not without quirks) and more interesting to learn while modern ones often look over-complicated. Just to clarify - I don't think that Intel should retain 16bit mode, but don't think removing it would make a big difference.