CISC software on RISC hardware

[Dick Dunn]

mjr at hussar.dco.dec.com (Marcus J. Ranum) writes:
...
> 	One fellow sent me mail in response to my earlier posting that
> was very thought-provoking. I can't recall exactly what his phrase was,
> but the gist of it was:
> 
> We are running CISC software on our RISC machines.

'Twas me.  My view is that software currently stands where the auto did in
1959:  Tailfins and chrome are important.  It doesn't matter how much it
weighs, or what sort of mileage it gets, because features are what matter.
Cheap, reliable transportation is anathema in today's software world.

UNIX--the early Volkswagen--has somehow gotten lost.  We haven't invented
the Toyota yet.  (I like this analogy because it makes pointed reference to
who forced the US auto industry to wake up--I hope we don't need to wait
for the Japanese to wake up the US software industry in the same way.)

Moving back toward the RISC analogy--we keep adding stuff to software the
way ever-more-exotic instructions were added to hardware in the late '70s
and early '80s.  We just don't stop and look to see whether anything we're
adding is even useful, let alone necessary.  I keep thinking (hoping, in
fact) that sooner or later, when people want to start getting some real
work done with today's machines, there may be some inquiry as to why all
the goo is in the way.  Perhaps if we need to solve problems in the short
term and pretty things up later in the longer term (instead of the
reverse:-), we'll be forced to look at what we can do with today's hard-
ware, instead of waiting a couple years for hardware advances to bail us
out.  (Somehow the bail-out never quite comes...by the time a 2X hardware
advance has happened, we've squandered 1.5X of it.)

In one sense, I feel like this thread is wandering away from "UNIX wizards"
topics...but in another sense I think it's at the very heart:  We're
talking about the most significant UNIX "feature"--and it's the one we've
lost.
-- 
Dick Dunn     rcd at ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd       Boulder, CO   (303)449-2870
   ...Lately it occurs to me what a long, strange trip it's been.