TGIF

It's certainly been "one of those days", an apt finish to "one of those weeks". Initially, it seemed as though the phone wouldn't stop, and I even (briefly!) considered closing the mailserver to any new incoming messages. However, by lunchtime matters had settled a bit and I got back to the best bit of the job - spending money. This time it's just a low-powered server for a new development job, but it will fill a gap in the cabinets.

Earlier in the week, we were talking about older systems, and I was trying to remember the first real Windows server I ran - I'm sure it was a 286 processor, but the details are very hazy. What is surprising is that the rate of change seems to have slowed down a bit now, Moore's Law notwithstanding. We are looking after three-year old systems that you could probably still purchase today - I can't remember that being the case any time in the last dozen years or so. Yes, there are newer boxes around, but the jump much beyond 3 GHz processors seems be taking a good long run-up.

At the same time, however, software requirements don't seem to have diminished, and ever-increasing memory allocations seem to be the order of the day. While I'd accept that the functionality is way beyond what we thought was state-of-the-art when I started in this game, the pursuit of optimised code seems have been ignored. How many of the new generation of programmers have ever had to handcraft machine code? We accept bloated software all in the name of enhanced functionality, but what percentage of those Unique Selling Point features are really necessary or even used regularly?