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A comment on C64 OS: make a Commodore 64 feel fast and useful. Parent comment

Re:C64 OS: make a Commodore 64 feel fast and useful by badsectoracula on Friday December 10, 2021 @03:14PM (#29514934)
Luddite is someone who is opposed to new technology, which doesn't apply here as the sentiment isn't about being opposed to the new tech but about the new tech not being taken advantage of.

The software we build today is "vastly" more powerful in the sense that, strictly speaking, you can do more stuff, but it is way less powerful - and often broken - than what it could be, considering what you can see being possible on older hardware and what seems to be done in modern hardware.

Also it isn't really something that happens today, here is a nice (and funny) talk from Joe Armstrong on the topic from almost 8 years ago[0]. Though this sort of sentiment goes way back, e.g. Wirth's classic "Plea for lean software" article from 1995[1].

(Joe's talk is more about the broken part and IMO he misidentifies the issue being about trying to make things fast when the real issue -that he also mentions- is that pretty much nobody knows what is really going on with the system itself)

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKXe3HUG2l4

[1] https://cr.yp.to/bib/1995/wirth.pdf

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Re:C64 OS: make a Commodore 64 feel fast and useful by cageface on Friday December 10, 2021 @03:24PM (#29515035)
This is because people don’t want to pay the cost of software carefully developed to take maximum advantage of modern hardware. In specific niches like audio production where this is desired then prices run into hundreds of dollars for a single plugin to cover the development costs.
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Re:C64 OS: make a Commodore 64 feel fast and useful by Karrot_Kream on Friday December 10, 2021 @09:10PM (#29517754)
It's always this way. Just like most people are happy with Ikea furniture, so most people are happy with the equivalent of "Ikea software". It's good enough. For folks who _are_ willing to pay, you can buy everything from low latency audio gear/software to dedicated Internet bandwidth to high reliability SBCs.
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Re:C64 OS: make a Commodore 64 feel fast and useful by hedgewitch on Friday December 10, 2021 @04:26PM (#29515637)
And even then, quite a lot of that audio production software is very, very inefficient, primarily due to poor GUI development. There are a few popular choices of software that are very well-known for being CPU hogs, even relative to more complex software.
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Re:C64 OS: make a Commodore 64 feel fast and useful by FleaFlicker99 on Friday December 10, 2021 @05:49PM (#29516437)
Particularly the business often doesn't want to take on the goal of improved performance when good-enough will suffice. Which can often make sense when you factor in increase development costs, reduced flexibility/maintainability, and reduced ability to recruit for people with the skillset to work on such things.

Then again, performance is often a feature in itself. In some cases it can open whole new areas of potential business. Often times it isn't even particularly hard to achieve, it just requires decent engineering practices.

Unfortunately good engineering practices can be hard to find/hire for, especially among a development community/culture that hasn't had to bother caring about performance for a long time.

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