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New technology
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2023
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Haha, there's still things embedded deep in code and in CPUs that go way back to the 80s. If only y'all knew. It's all shit built on top of older shit, built on top of even older shit with kludges and hacks to glue it all together. Know why Windows has five different ways to access the same setting? Because if they get rid of the older methods, they break a ton of other shit that depends on it too. A house of cards or a Jenga tower.
A modern PC can STILL natively boot a DOS floppy from 1986 in legacy BIOS mode because of this.
Theres also examples in the corporate world where some companies are STILL running 70s mainframes, and use shiny new PCs as front end terminals that just connect to the same old backend.
This is super interesting and I had NO IDEA! Makes me very curious how much more efficient an entire fresh start might be with new tech.
CPU architecture wise, you can see the difference between cluttered, old x86 and ARM or even RISC-V chips. They just run so much more efficient, as you can tell with your phone lasting a day or two, or apple silicon consuming a fraction for the same performance.
An example for the ancient backend would be the flight pathing system DAL. (Wendover video)