Re: gEDA-user: Re: Flame about XML

[Andy Peters <devel@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Mar 14, 2007, at 4:55 PM, Dave McGuire wrote:

> On Mar 14, 2007, at 7:51 PM, Andy Peters wrote:
> > > I am totaly agree with Michael's view of the world. I'd add my  
> > > favourite
> > > phrase on this topic: "some time ago, two 8bit MCUs @1MHz were  
> > > enough to set a
> > > satellite into its orbit. Nowdays, a 3GHz CPU is not enough to  
> > > load an office
> > > suit. Something went wrong."
> >
> > Yeah, would you want to do PCB layout on a pair of 8-bit MCUs  
> > running at 1 MHz?
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > I didn't think so.
>
>   You know...quite a few companies did PCB layout on computers of  
> similar clock speeds in the early 1970s.  It can certainly be done,  
> and assuming that it'd be painful to do is just that...an assumption.
>
>   Seriously.  There is some grand assumption that just because the  
> capabilities we have now are good that the capabilities we had  
> twenty years ago sucked.  That is not always the case.

I have a Sun SparcStation 10 at home.  It sits, unused.  Every once  
in a while, I talk about it, and I say, "You know, I used to do Real  
Work on that machine."

I used to do Real Work on Apollo workstations (before HP bought 'em  
and dissolved 'em), running Mentor Graphics (which shipped on  
cartridge tapes).  It was a Big Deal upgrading from the 68030  
processor to the 68040, and the upgrade was Not Cheap.

The company I used to work for (the one with the unused Data I/O  
2900) got its start doing PCB CAD machines based on 68000 processors  
and custom graphics boards, all on VME backplanes.  (The guys who  
founded the company told me that they ate their own dog food, in a  
very real way.)  I got the chance to fire one up, and it worked, but  
the PC on my desk running PCAD ate it for breakfast.

So, yeah, we used to do Real Work with these old hunks-o-junk ("...  
and we were happy to have the tools!"), but the sad fact is that the  
$500 Mac mini sitting next to my TV set runs circles around all of  
them, and part of being a Smart Engineer is choosing the right tool  
for the job.  Sticking with archaic hardware because of some romantic  
notion about computing purity strikes me as fucking stupid, pardon my  
New Jersey.

Of course, regarding the topic of XML, I'm firmly on the side of  
those who say, "Ixnay on the XML-ay."

-a


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