Bloat costs

[Ken Thompson]

>In article <266577FA.6D99 at tct.uucp> chip at tct.uucp (Chip Salzenberg) writes:
>   According to jtc at van-bc.UUCP (J.T. Conklin):
>
>  [stuff deleted]
>
>One of the wonderful things about 20Mip 32Mb workstations is that I
>don't have to worry about eff. when writing most code.  I can
>concentrate on other issues such as clarity of code, speed of
>execution, speed of development, fancy features, ...
>>
>by "eff." i mean "frugal of code and data".
>

I strongly disagree that efficiency(including code/date size) can reasonably 
be ignored. No matter how quickly the power of machines grow, the things that
we want to do with them grow even faster. I believe it is a grave mistake
not to be concerned with the efficiency of the algorithms used in programming.
IMHO, this attitude has led to a severe decline in the capability of software
vs. the hardware resources required to execute it. Note I did not say 
anything about the cost of these resources. I find this depressing to say
the least.

				Ken
 

-- 
Ken Thompson  GTRI, Ga. Tech, Atlanta Ga. 30332 Internet:!kt4 at prism.gatech.edu
uucp:...!{allegra,amd,hplabs,ut-ngp}!gatech!prism!kt4
"Rowe's Rule: The odds are five to six that the light at the end of the
tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train."       -- Paul Dickson