[ih] internet-history Digest, Vol 37, Issue 6

[Larry Sheldon]

[This may be off-topic and unwelcome--please so indicate by not 
responding to it in any way.  I have been involved with computers for a 
long time, but not involved in network development in the sense the term 
is used here.]

John Day wrote:

>                                         In the space of just a few years
> the overhead issue had become a non-issue.


I have long been interested in how often this syndrome has occurred 
(worrying about things that we spent a lot of time and other resources 
that became non-issues before we solved them).

When I started, things had to fit in 16,000 characters (32,000 if you 
were very wealthy, 64,000 rumored but never seen) of memory (14XX's), 
then 10,000 decimal words (707X's).

We went to extraordinary lengths to reduce the number of characters 
written to (256BPI, 7-track) tapes (some of the bizarre stuff takes a 
while to explain so I'll spare you).

Then we went to disks and drums where the space issue also involved the 
dreaded read-before-writes, and minimization of head movement and 
latency (hard to do in COBOL).

Now we have memory-by-the-acre, disc-by-the-cubic-mile, and disk speeds, 
high-speed cache, and solid-state-discs of huge size that have 
eliminated all those concerns (and we use programming language that 
makes them hard to see and impossible to do anything about).

What is there left to worry about?

Besides batteries that spontaneously combust in one of our several 
computes in our pockets.

-- 
Requiescas in pace o email              Two identifying characteristics
                                              of System Administrators:
Ex turpi causa non oritur actio        Infallibility, and the ability to
                                              learn from their mistakes.
Eppure si rinfresca

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