[Python-Dev] On the dangers of giving developers the best resources

[Guido van Rossum]

On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 8:33 AM, R. David Murray <rdmurray at bitdance.com>wrote:

> PS: I have always thought it sad that the ready availability of memory,
> CPU speed, and disk space tends to result in lazy programs.  I understand
> there is an effort/value tradeoff, and I make those tradeoffs myself
> all the time...but it still makes me sad.  Then, again, in my early
> programming days I spent a fair amount of time writing and using Forth,
> and that probably colors my worldview. :)
>

I never used or cared for Forth, but I have the same worldview. I remember
getting it from David Rosenthal, an early Sun reviewer. He stated that
engineers should be given the smallest desktop computer available, not the
largest, so they would feel their users' pain and optimize appropriately.
Sadly software vendors who are also hardware vendors have incentives going
in the opposite direction -- they want users to feel the pain so they'll
buy a new device.

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)
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