[Haskell-cafe] Re: sizeFM type

[S. Alexander Jacobson]

On Tue, 27 Apr 2004, Tomasz Zielonka wrote:
> The data you provided is interesting. However, if I had such a machine,
> my work could be much less challenging :)

I would note that people today are making
strenuous efforts to retain compatibility with a
Haskell98 standard that it only 6 years old!  If
we are making choices intended to have a lifetime
of e.g. 10 years (see
<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000017.html>),
then I would observe that the 24gb machine I
specced out will, assuming Moore's law lasts, cost
only $2k in 5-6 years.  The Sun Fire 15k with
288GB of memory and 72 Sparcs (think GPH!), that
today costs $2.6m will cost only $155k.  Note,
since you don't need 72 CPUs, you'll probably be
able to get this machine for <$50k.

So, perhaps the question here is: What is the
planned lifetime of sizeFM?  Do we prefer the
safety of knowing our code will work at arbitrary
scale or the ecstacy of having it run fast today?

Put differently, would you rather cope with
hardware limitations today or software limitations
tomorrow?

-Alex-

_________________________________________________________________
S. Alexander Jacobson                  mailto:me at alexjacobson.com
tel:917-770-6565                       http://alexjacobson.com