Re:Crafting a high-performance TV user interface using React
by pjc50 on Thursday January 12, 2017 @04:53PM
(#13386478)
> Why should that ever be the case?
You can solve any problem by adding more software and layers of abstraction, except the problem of too much software. That's the state we're in now.
The BBC micro could have a word processor in ROM that would boot almost instantly and responded to keypresses immediately. This was because the software was written in assembler and had to fit in a small ROM. The choice of using a TV system running (say) Android and a web browser means that, although the software is slightly easier to write and the processor is 100 times faster, it has to execute 10,000 times more machine instructions in order to render the UI.
This is partly why people like Maciej campaign against multi-megabyte text pages. Another way is possible.
You can solve any problem by adding more software and layers of abstraction, except the problem of too much software. That's the state we're in now.
The BBC micro could have a word processor in ROM that would boot almost instantly and responded to keypresses immediately. This was because the software was written in assembler and had to fit in a small ROM. The choice of using a TV system running (say) Android and a web browser means that, although the software is slightly easier to write and the processor is 100 times faster, it has to execute 10,000 times more machine instructions in order to render the UI.
This is partly why people like Maciej campaign against multi-megabyte text pages. Another way is possible.