[Info-vax] Intel proposal to simplify x86-64

[Johnny Billquist]

On 2023-06-11 19:42, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 6/11/2023 9:34 AM, Johnny Billquist wrote:
>> On 2023-06-11 03:34, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>>> On 6/10/2023 7:20 AM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>>>> Unfortunately the focus today is on speed and low cost.  People toss 
>>>> together
>>>> rapid prototypes and put them into production systems.  Back in the 
>>>> eighties
>>>> software engineering people talked about code reusability as being a 
>>>> goal
>>>> for improving code quality.  Now people just cut and paste library 
>>>> calls
>>>> that they don't understand off of websites and wonder why their 
>>>> machine is
>>>> so slow and insecure.
>>>>
>>>> Pretty much all of the things we need to implement very safe computing
>>>> systems were developed in the 1970s and 1980s and prototype capability
>>>> architectures have been tested and used.  Back then, people were not 
>>>> willing
>>>> to live with the substantial performance hit.  Today, that 
>>>> performance hit
>>>> is even more of a problem because so much code is written so much 
>>>> more poorly.
>>>
>>> Code reuse means library use.
>>>
>>> Todays developers knows less about the library functions they use than
>>> they did 40 years ago. Because the number of library functions increased
>>> by a factor 100 or so.
>>
>> True. However, I also feel that people in general are less writing 
>> libraries, and more just using them. And instead they copy code and 
>> have several versions of the same code for every different project 
>> they work on.
>>
>> Most people don't even know how to create a library anymore.
> 
> A lot of people still know how and actually do.
> 
> The number of available libraries (libraries not functions!) via
> Maven (Java), NuGet (.NET), npm (JS) and PyPi (Python) are all
> all counted in hundreds of thousands.
> 
>>> Computers are way more secure today than they were 40 years
>>> ago. They have to because the threats have evolved dramatically.
>>
>> I'm not sure I agree with that. However, the security problems and 
>> issues have shifted a lot.
>>
>> 40 years ago, you had a lot of rather stupid, simple security 
>> problems. Like no encryption on network traffic, little 
>> authentication, little audited code, and so on. So it was very 
>> insecure in that way.
>>
>> Nowadays, those kind of problems are getting scarce. However, programs 
>> these days are so complex, and contain so many components. That means 
>> pretty much noone can really audit or understand the code anymore, and 
>> noone even tries. In addition, since so many things are in the form of 
>> libraries or services that you depend on, any kind of problem in any 
>> of them can potentially affect a whole lot of systems and programs, 
>> meaning any security issue is potentially a very large and severe one. 
>> That was not the case 40 years ago.
>>
>> So security problems are harder to identify, and have a potentially 
>> way larger impact today. So are we more secure? If you go by the 
>> impact of the security problems 40 years ago and security problems 
>> today, then the impact today is way higher. (Obvious, since people 
>> exploiting security issues have also become way more sophisticated 
>> over 40 years, along with the tools available.)
>>
>> 40 years ago, social engineering was the biggest exploit vector. 
>> Probably not different than today. Just think of War Games as a good 
>> example (pretty close to 40 years ago now).
> 
> There are 3 aspects:
> 
> practices 40 years ago vs practices today
> applications 40 years ago vs applications today
> threats 40 years ago vs threats today
> 
> Applications has become way more complex and are usually
> more openly accessible than 40 years ago.
> 
> Exploiting vulnerabilities has become an industry with
> both criminals and socalled "state actors".
> 
> If practices from 40 years ago was used today to develop
> applications, then I don't think that would go well.
> 
> It is not really surprising. The world progresses. And
> it is not unique for IT. Try design a car using 40 year
> old practices and compare the result to a modern car.

Not disagreeing with anything you've said, except that I don't agree 
that computer systems have become "way more secure than 40 years ago".

   Johnny