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Re: [crosstool-NG] Design discussion


On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 06:41:12PM -0500, Rob Landley wrote:
> Automobiles are the most complicated piece of reasonably mature technology 
> that ordinary individuals use on a daily basis.  You need training and 
> certification to operate them, they have extensive maintenance requirements 
> their users need to be aware of (gas, oil, brake pads), but most people 
> aren't mechanics and aren't expected to be, even though system failures can 
> maim or kill.  Despite that, we take them for granted, expect everybody to 
> learn to use them as a teenager, and lots of families have two.
> 
> If you want to know how people will think about computers once they've been 
> around for 100 years, the automobile is an obvious model because very little 
> else has been _around_ for 100 years.  (The light bulb and the rotary dial 
> telephone started about the same era, but neither were in the same complexity 
> category.  We're not expected to _operate_ either in a nontrivial way.)

Ah... Completely forgot to mention probably key issue here (And then I'll
try to keep silent on this offtopic ;-)). Automobile is a device with a sole
purpose to move you from place to place. It does it from the very beginning
and it does it very same way. Over those one hundred years nothing really
changed. Yes, driving comfort and speed differ, but automobile as a such
still does the same - it moves you.

Computer as a device changeid a lot during less than half of that time (not
counting mechanical computers). MEDA 42 TA [1] programs different way than
IQ 151 [2] and each is better for different sort of tasks.

Now once you look at modern computer, it can be told to solve very different
tasks even those which were hardly imaginable in late 60's. And it is its
variability which make comparsion computer vs automobile pretty useless.
Sure you can compare anything to anything but is that really worht doing so?
Look at DVD players, most of them does its job pretty well, are very easy to
operate (even my grandparents can handle that while they are clueless sitting
in front of keyboard) and yet noone compares DVD player to automobile although
hardware inside is a decent computer. And this is the whole point. What is
comparing a computer (doing nothing and everything) and the automobile (doing
still the same) good for?

Sorry to say, I do not see analogy there even from user perspective.

	ladis

[1] http://rechentechnik.foerderverein-tsd.de/meda42/bilder/meda42.X.jpg
[2] http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/IQ_151

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