Stewart X Addison

Great one hour video which is probably accessible to anyone following me on here on how the #Elite on the #BBCMicro squeezed everything into 32KiB of RAM (including frame buffer) I knew bits of this but not all of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC4YLMLar5I

I often wish modern software was more efficient but for reasons of ease-of-development that isn't a priority.

Security and performance are my top interests in software development. Others suggesting "a bit of extra time doesn't matter" often frustrates me

Elite: "The game that couldn't be written"

YouTube
Jul 26, 2024 at 2:40pmWeb
Show threadStewart X AddisonJul 26, 2024

My biggest worry about the computer industry is that a lot of people in software don't understand how computers work at the lower level, and so those skills will become less prevalent. But we will still need people who can understand, make secure, and fix bugs on them and the people capable of doing that will become more scarce.

Personally I feel very lucky now to be working every day with JVM developers who have many skills in that area. #fridayMusings

Show threadThomas StüfeJul 26, 2024
@sxa We won't die out.
Show threadStewart X AddisonJul 26, 2024
@tstuefe Maybe we should be prioritised for any life-extending advances in medication ;-)
Show threadThomas StüfeJul 26, 2024
@sxa ;-)
Show threadStewart X AddisonAug 2, 2024
I suspect there are still a lot of people currently in the computer industry who aren't aware of IEC80000-13 (based on 1999's IEC60027) which defines binary prefixes for powers of 1024 instead of 1000. So if you are one of them make sure you use KiB, MiB, GiB etc. (kibi- mebi- gibi-) when talking about powers of 1024. It made little difference in the Kilo era (2.34% less) but it's more significant with current sizes:
1KB vs 1KiB: 2.34%
1MB vs 1MiB: 4.63%
1GB vs 1GiB: 6.86%
1Tb vs 1TiB: 9.05%