Date: Sun, 25 Feb 2001 00:34:40 -0800 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Wes Peters" <wes@softweyr.com> Cc: <freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: RE: Itty bitty boxes dislodge PCs? (No longer RMS) Message-ID: <001101c09f05$cb5d0de0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <3A982D79.3335694A@softweyr.com>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
>-----Original Message----- >From: wes [mailto:wes]On Behalf Of Wes Peters >Sent: Saturday, February 24, 2001 1:54 PM >To: Ted Mittelstaedt >Cc: freebsd-advocacy@FreeBSD.ORG >Subject: Itty bitty boxes dislodge PCs? (No longer RMS) > > >Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: >> >> Your never going to see anything come along and dislodge C and >C++ from their >> positions, > >Funny, "they" said that about C over Pascal, and C++ over C. > Ahh - if you may remember Pascal was specifically _written_ to be a toy "teaching" language, not a development language. I had the misfortune to be force-fed a number of terms of Pascal while chasing a CS degree and I grew to heartily hate it's ugly syntax and requirements which basically forced you to write the program backards, because the human mind doesn't think like a single-pass compiler. I was doubly pissed because the year after I got done with all the 200-level courses, the college dumped Pascal and replaced it with C++. The misguided fools that actually _used_ Pascal for mainframe programming got what they deserved, IMHO. As far as C++ displacing C, we all knew that was a rediculous argument. C++ was developed as an adjunct language to C, not as a replacement. It solves different problems than C does. Both are just as popular today. >> just as your never going to see a special-purpose PC (like a >> webTV box or a Sony Playstation) dislodge the general purpose desktop PC. > >Dislodge the PC from what? Sales numbers that are a couple of orders of >magnitude SMALLER than the market for Playstations? Gee, thats a market >to go after. > The Intel-based variation of The IBM PC has been around for 20 years now, and shows no signs of disappearing. It's going to still be here long after all the Playstations are dislodging Pong games from their place in the bin at Goodwill. In terms of Total sales over the life of the product, what people have made from the sale of PC's simply dwarfs what they have made from the sale of Playstations. The Playstation may have had some significant impact on the computer games market, but it hasn't had the fundamental impact on our lives that the PC has had. Ted Mittelstaedt tedm@toybox.placo.com Author of: The FreeBSD Corporate Networker's Guide Book website: http://www.freebsd-corp-net-guide.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-advocacy" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?001101c09f05$cb5d0de0$1401a8c0>