Re: Coding efficiently - Apples and Oranges
I agree with what you wrote about inefficient coding, but think your examples were off the mark.
RSX-11M provides only a text-only interface, and Windows includes a GUI. MS Windows does tons of stuff which RSX-11M does not. (Part of the problem with MS Windows is that most of the extra stuff it does is not needed, or not-wanted-to-outright-hated by its users.)
A combination of incredibly-cheap modern CPU cycles, incredibly-cheap RAM, and rising programmers' wages, with the mass-software market's demand for bright-and-shiny GUIs, more features (but each user wanting a different set of features than the other users want), and faster releases of new versions, make code efficiency the lowest thing on a software manager's priority list.
(And I think the PDP-11 has a pleasant, reasonably-orthogonal instruction set, whilst the modern x86 instruction set is a piss-soaked bag of rusted nails. Particularly egregious are write-only and machine-specific registers.)
Biting the hand that feeds IT
