Subject: Re: Y2K is over

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 21 Jul 2000 10:55:46 +0200

> balance sheet
>
>     value of 1.6 G bytes
>       ($200 IBM 20Gb drive, y2k)              $12
>
>     value of 50 hours programming
>       ($100 per hour, y2k)                  $5000
>
>     net gain (loss) to society
>       from the Zimm Buddism
>       ("every byte is sacred"):            ($4988)
>
> The 2nd millenium is over.  Save programmers, not bytes.

I would rather say: "Save user ressources, and then save hardware
and program maintainance ressources".

The attitude "Size is no longer important as RAM and disks are so
cheap!" is the reason behind Reiser's "law": "The speed increase
of hardware is slower than the speed loss of software." ("Die
Hardware wird langsamer schneller als die Software langsamer.")

Experience shows that programmers who stop to worry about the
ressources their programs eat up, have a tendency to more bugs
and poorer code design than the "good old byte savers". So don't
throw out the ideals of good programming just because in certain
areas the hardware prices have gone down.

Let us face it: First time creation of new programs is _not_ any
real bottleneck. Evolution of programs to improve their quality
and usability, however, _is_ a bottleneck. And outside the
wonderful world of universities and research labs, hardware
ressources _always_ show up as bottlenecks earlier or later, too.

Therefore, don't overdo "byte saving" at the cost of poor
program maintainability. But if byte saving can be achieved by a
simple sub-routine that is coded once and can be ignored
throughout the remainder of a program's life time (as in the case
of PGP packet lengths), then, for God's sake, save those bytes!

- Wolfgang Redtenbacher
  Chairman DIN NI-22.13 "Programming languages, M2"
  D/Chairman DIN NI-Erg/UA5 "Software ergonomics"
  (DIN = German Standards Institute)