Re: Searching for Fastest Way to Input a File
- Posted by mindwalker May 16, 2014
- 2675 views
It's actually a limit of sequences. After all, 1073741823 should be enough sequence elements for everyone!
My point is there are imaginable applications where this sequence size limitation could make the task even more difficult.
I'm pretty sure matt's comment is a joke (in-line with the supposed (and likely untrue) Bill Gates reference that "640K of RAM should be enough for everyone").
Thanks I didn't catch the reference, so thought I was looking at another of many short sighted assumptions littering the history of computers.
My favorite one is the IBM executive who decided that IBM wouldn't market the in-house developed mini computer (precurser to today's PCs) because in his opinion there was probably only a market for 5-10 world wide.
When I started my programing career I worked for a manufacturing company that produced automated mills and lathes. These were built with an attached computer that controled the machine's operations. When I started, these computers had 32KB total for both the operating system and the loaded (from Mylar tape) parts program; there was no floppy or hard drive since dust and such in the work environment was very destructive.
It was a constant struggle to minimize the operating system to preserve space for the parts program. When they moved to computers with 64KB of memory, it was thought we would never need all that space. A few predicted it would be the last time the computers would need to be upgraded. But it wasn't long until someone observed that if the operating manual was in the computer it would be a great improvement. Another suggested additional industry manuals could be added. In less than 2 years we were back to struggling to keep the operating system size small.
When I left the company after working there for 6 years, they were struggling to contain everything in a 128KB space. Turns out when the customers saw the manual stored on the computer many had asked if it was possible to keep their part programs on the machine so they wouldn't need to reload them each time and wouldn't have to worry about misplacing the mylar tapes.
