Article:		The Blacksmith and the Bookkeeper, Part 3
Subject:		I get it but you're way off
Date:		2004-10-12 14:21:42
From:		pjstadig
"But an entire operating system squeezed into 2K? It is obvious that the skills required of a successful programmer in 1969 are very different from the skills required of a successful programmer today." Hogwash! The OS of 1969 was completely different than today. If you are suggesting that we couldn't fit a modern operating system into 2K, then all I can say is, "duh!" The AGC probably didn't deal with the kinds of complex things that operating systems do today. Was the AGC a multi-programming OS? Concurrent? I would bet it certainly didn't run any generic application that was thrown at it. Writing an OS that turns on LEDs and accepts input from on/off switches (not that AGC was that) in 2K is not the same as putting Windows in 2K. There's a qualitative difference between the two OS's. There is not a qualitative difference between the skills required to write them. It's a difference of knowledge applied in the context of different constraints. I'm not discounting your point. As a Java programmer I haven't looked up searching and sorting algorithms in Knuth, but I think you're trying to make your point by "shocking" the reader with 2K constraints and such. I reject the claim that writing AGC in 2K is fundamentally different than what we do today. It's different, but not fundamentally so.