FW: Programming vs. Technical Writing

["Collins, Darren DA" <Collins -dot- Darren -dot- DA -at- BHP -dot- COM -dot- AU>]

(ranting back at you, with tongue firmly in cheek)

Hmmm, I can see the blurb on the software packaging now...

Minimum system requirements:
        IBM-XT compatible or higher
        MS-DOS 1.0 or higher
        64 Kb RAM
        360 Kb 5 1/4" floppy disk drive
        CGA graphics card

Features:
        Colour, 320x160 pixel editing
        Spell checking
        Online help
        Actual boldface, underlined and italicised text on-screen
        Innovative use of colour to indicate super- and sub-script etc.
        Full 80-character wide display
        Function key support
        Support for over 4 different dot matrix printer brands

Seriously, I don't think anyone would buy the above product nowadays.  I
don't even think anyone would download it if it was freeware.  People
expect mouse support, support for more than just a handful of printers,
graphical user interfaces, support for graphics, different font
families, styles, sizes, colour, spacing etc, decent control over
headers, footers, pagination, formatting, diagram labelling, tables,
references, footnotes, etc, cut and paste between applications,
multi-tasking, etc.  The list is a long one.

Funnily enough, I had a C64 and I also had that program.  My friends
couldn't believe how advanced it was, but they thought it was way too
complicated and that most people wouldn't even use many of the features.
I remember its graphical display made it much slower on screen updates
than text-mode word processors, too.

These advances come at a cost, and that is system resources.  You don't
have to pay the price, but you won't get the improvements if you don't.
Don't forget that a C64 with printer, monitor and disk drive cost over
$1,000 back then (at least, here in Australia).  That's not too far off
what you could pay for a second-hand PC nowadays with enough RAM and
disk space to run Word adequately, so I don't think the hardware
resource argument is an issue.

On a side note, I think some people on this thread may be misinformed
about the subtleties of programming.  Yes, I could spend a day or two
optimising a funtion so that it runs 20% faster or takes up 20% less
space (I've done it many times before!), but why add that to the
development cost if that function is rarely used or if it's fast enough
and small enough already?  Optimised code becomes hardware-dependant and
harder to maintain in the future.  Maybe Microsoft could spend the time
to make Word twice as fast, half the size, and with military-grade
reliability, but then everyone would complain that they need a
particular graphics card or processor to run it, and that it costs over
$2,000, and that everything in it is Americanised, and that it won't
read their WordPerfect files, and that they really liked that paper clip
thing it had in the good old days.

I'm not slanging off at you, just venting my Programmer's Frustration.
Too many people spend too much time worrying about things that don't
matter.

Regards,
Darren Collins
Computer Engineer, Blast Furnaces
BHP Port Kembla, Australia


-----Original Message-----
From: Matt Ion [mailto:soundy -at- soundy -dot- ml -dot- org]
Sent: Friday, 14 August 1998 4:53
To: TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
Subject: Re: Programming vs. Technical Writing
<snip>
<OT rant>
I used to have a word processor on my old Commodore 64, called
Paperback Writer.  It was the first one that I'm aware of to have
complete *online*, quasi-context-sensitive help (hit F7 just about
anywhere to get help on what you were doing) *and* a complete
spellchecker.

This was no simple text editor, either.  While the 64's text-video mode
only supported 40 columns, Paperback used its 320x160 hi-res video mode
to generate 80-column, semi-WYSIWYG editing.  Underlined, boldface and
italicized text was displayed properly, and super- and sub-script were
indicated using different-colored lettering.  It had extensive (for the
time) cut-and-paste capabilities as well.

Later, a spreadsheet and database (Paperback Planner and Paperback
Filer) were added and the three were packaged together; they could
share the spellchecker and easily transport and export/import files
between the three: the first(?) integrated office suite.

The whole of Paperback Writer resided on two 170kb, 5.25" floppies: one
for the program and help files, one for the spellchecker and
dictionary.  As the name implies, the C-64 had a massive 64k of RAM
(most machines now have eight times that amount of L2 cache!) and a
hammer-down Motorola 6510 processor running at a smokin' 1MHz clock
speed.

Today, multiply the RAM and storage requirements by 1024, quadruple the
CPU bits and increase its speed by a factor of 400, and you get a
program with a lot of bells and whistles that nobody needs or uses (and
no, that doesn't include dancing paperclips... those don't even rate a
small whistle), while getting about the same overall performance for
the same basic functions that everyone has come to take for granted.

Ahhhh, progress.
</rant>


 Your friend and mine,
 Matt
 <All standard disclaimers apply>
 "Reality is in alpha test on protoype hardware."

------------------------------------------------------------------------
----

 Having is not so pleasing a thing as wanting;
 it is not logical, but it is often true.
                                - Spock


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