colin_mccabe

21 ms·

211.
by colin_mccabe 13y ago
What's embarrassing is that people are still evaluating programming languages like they were bags of features. The more features you stuff in the bag, the better it must be! The reality is that generics aren't free. They result
212.
by colin_mccabe 13y ago
I guess MIPS and PowerPC are still around somewhere, but it's definitely a lot less common to see them these days. For example, it used to be that every Mac came with a PowerPC, and so people were aware of the issues that chip had. N
213.
by colin_mccabe 13y ago
If you go back to 1993, SPARC, PA-RISC, MIPS, and Alpha all seemed like serious contenders for the next big CPU architecture. To my knowledge, none of them supported unaligned access (though I'm sure someone will point out a counterex
214.
by colin_mccabe 13y ago
Why doesn't the compiler handle this for the programmer? Seems "free" in the no-tradeoffs sense. Traditionally, C and C++ programs have been compiled by running the compiler on each .c file, and then linking together the re
215.
by colin_mccabe 13y ago
Properly-functionioning spinning disks haven't had issues with random data loss on power failure for at least a decade now. Source? And your impression of cheap SSDs is dead, flat wrong. They're cheap - every unnecessary part i
216.
by colin_mccabe 13y ago
There are many "real competitors" to C++. The biggest one is C. Many things were written in C in recent years: the Postgres database, networkmanager, pulseaudio, the Linux, BSD, and Mach kernels, zeroMQ, sshd, Xfce, Gnome 2 and
217.
by colin_mccabe 13y ago
My impression was that even cheap SSDs should have ultracapacitors or small batteries that allow them to survive a power loss event without being bricked. Of course, the stuff in the cache is lost at that point, but that's no worse th
218.
by colin_mccabe 13y ago
It is good to see someone actually testing the power-loss protection claims made by manufacturers. However, uninterruptible power supplies are usually a better investment than power-loss resilient storage media. The problem is, even if you