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oldtobor
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I was trying to figure out how many instructions there are in the world. Now cobol is said to have 100 billion lines of code and I guess all the other languages combined could reach maybe 100 billion lines of code. All other languages include fortran, c, c++, java, basic, and all the microcontroller programs written in assembler.
Now that is without repetition. I mean that is considering just one sample of each distinct program. So maybe 200 billion lines of code, translated into assembler then may reach A TRILLION LINES OF ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE IN ALL!
Now if you consider repetition you can reach 10 to the 18 lines of assembler code in the whole world. Wow, that is a lot of code floating around.
Now who on Earth is going to maintain and take care of it all ?
I like big numbers, so sometimes I try to calculate how many equivalent IBM PCs of computer power is currently installed in the world. If you consider that the 1981 model could do 300 thousands instructions per second, today you could maybe estimate at least 100 times that for each PC. SO there are a billion computers in the world today so you get 100 billion equivalent IBM PCs of computing power floating around in the world. WOW! that is alot!
If you consider that the first basic programs that just opened a file and printed out all the lines containing a string with the famous INSTR($Target,$Pattern) instruction could already be done for a few thousand records in 1981, THAT IS TO SAY THAT 90 % OF ALL REAL SOFTWARE PROBLEMS WERE ALREADY SOLVED IN 1981 ON THE SIMPLE IBM PC WITH THAT GREAT LANGUAGE CALLED BASIC, you can see how much excess capacity is just hanging around. All software problems have been basically solved already in the early 1980s.
Today the same problem is solved in DOS by executing this simple program in perl:
c:\>perl -ane"print if/put your pattern in here/" inputfile
you can also naturally run it off a unix prompt. So most software has been done in one line...
Now that is without repetition. I mean that is considering just one sample of each distinct program. So maybe 200 billion lines of code, translated into assembler then may reach A TRILLION LINES OF ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE IN ALL!
Now if you consider repetition you can reach 10 to the 18 lines of assembler code in the whole world. Wow, that is a lot of code floating around.
Now who on Earth is going to maintain and take care of it all ?
I like big numbers, so sometimes I try to calculate how many equivalent IBM PCs of computer power is currently installed in the world. If you consider that the 1981 model could do 300 thousands instructions per second, today you could maybe estimate at least 100 times that for each PC. SO there are a billion computers in the world today so you get 100 billion equivalent IBM PCs of computing power floating around in the world. WOW! that is alot!
If you consider that the first basic programs that just opened a file and printed out all the lines containing a string with the famous INSTR($Target,$Pattern) instruction could already be done for a few thousand records in 1981, THAT IS TO SAY THAT 90 % OF ALL REAL SOFTWARE PROBLEMS WERE ALREADY SOLVED IN 1981 ON THE SIMPLE IBM PC WITH THAT GREAT LANGUAGE CALLED BASIC, you can see how much excess capacity is just hanging around. All software problems have been basically solved already in the early 1980s.
Today the same problem is solved in DOS by executing this simple program in perl:
c:\>perl -ane"print if/put your pattern in here/" inputfile
you can also naturally run it off a unix prompt. So most software has been done in one line...
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