The Hardware Solution to Computing

Moore’s law firmly stuffed up the world. At least the computing world. And before you throw the brickbats at me, allow me to explain …

You see, before the Moore’s law was actualised, developers used to be called programmers. And with good reasons. The were optimising code to work on an extremely limited real estate, and even more limited fire-power (Anybody Remember old bill talking down the need for a machine faster than a 286?). And thus, this class of rare human beings was well remunerated. And while they were at it, they sent Neil Amstrong to the moon using the fire-power of a 286.

Enter Gordon Moore. He assures people that the speed of his intel chips will double every 18 months and everything else including the price of a neighbourhood visit to a brothel. From that point onwards, programmers figured that they could throw hardware at a problem. And along the way, they changed the name of their profession to developers. Kind of reminds you of the property developers in Fourways who left with a half-finished house but picked up the cheque for a complete house right?

I am given to understand that up to until recently, this rare breed of human beings (developers), was alive but endagered. They were working on SIM cards. Yes, the humble SIM card has some logic that needed to be coded. And that took all of 8K when GSM operations were beginning to pickup. But these clever chap at the SIM manufacturing companies caught on. They also started throwing hardware at a problem. It quickly went to 32K, then 64K and god know where else. In the meantime, they figured that they could outsurce the code to the handset, which was doing a better job at keeping up with the Moore’s law. So, to recap, they increased the memory of the SIM card and reduced the functionality. Out went all the SIM apps. So, I am afraid, the programmer there has also become a developer.

So, how does this affect life? Actually, not much. It means that the Taiwanese continue to mint it making ever bigger and faster Chips. The retailer have a new tech buzzword to bamboozle us and in the process separating us from our hard earned cash and Bill Gates has another billion to conduct Malaria research.

And the band plays on.