[Info-vax] openvms and xterm

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 4/22/2024 9:02 PM, Grant Taylor wrote:
> On 4/22/24 19:15, motk wrote:
>> I dunno, I'm not unintelligent but have you seen how much stress a 
>> browser engine has to endure? Thousands of people with phds smash 
>> these things to bits on the regular. Hundreds of thousands of people 
>> use electron/react/whatever apps every day and never notice. Grousing 
>> about this isn't a good look anymore.
> 
> How much more productive work is done with a contemporary web browser in 
> 2024 than in 2004 or even in 1998 (save for encryption)?

A lot I would say.

Most of email has moved to web.

A good chunk of office has moved to web (Google, MS in web mode).

Enabled by a combination of:
* faster PC's
* more standardized HTML & CSS - no more "requires IE x.0"
* faster JavaScript engines (JIT compiling)

> How much more productive work are computers doing in general in 2024 
> than in 1994?

The world has become digitalized. A huge part of paper work
is now all electronic.

And also outside the administrative stuff. Try compare how a 2024
car works compared to a 1994 car.

> Have the frameworks and fancy things that are done in 2024 actually 
> improved things?

They have enabled a lot of new stuff.

> I feel like there is massively disproportionately more computation power 
> / resources consumed for very questionable things with not much to show 
> for it.  Think what could have been done in the mid '90s with today's 
> computing resources.

Software is changing due to hardware changes.

If you in 1994 could solve a problem in two ways:

A - super cool, takes 100 seconds
B - acceptable, takes 1 second

you picked B.

In 2024 it is:

A - super cool, takes 0.1 second
B - acceptable, takes 0.001 second

you pick A.

Arne