Charles Angelich wrote in a message to Matt Mc_carthy:

RJT>> Ain't technology wonderful? :-) 

MM> Gotta agree there! My first 15 Meg, with R/S employee
MM> discount and on SALE, was $1100. Makes me cry to think how
MM> many Gigs that would buy today! 

CA> The 'wonderful technology' is a double-edged sword that cuts both
CA> ways. :-) 

CA> On the one hand it's great what is possible to do, on the other
CA> hand it's encouraged sloppy programming, poor engineering of
CA> hardware, and we are forced to maintain a constant inventory of
CA> replacement parts or become unable to use newer software and
CA> hardware.

I can agree about the sloppy programming part.  What we saw early on was a
lot of expertise and a lot of discipline brought to programming,  which
_needed_ that because of very expensive and limited machine resources.  By
comparison,  the price of time for even PhDs was cheaper.  The same goes
for the cost of other early electronic hardware,  as compared with the
price of a tech to repair it!  (Been there,  done that one!  :-)  And while
some of what's come along in terms of programming tools has been attempts
to try and further the discipline that was a part of the field earlier, 
other tools have come along that make it "easy" for people to
"program" and generate any sort of end product that they want, 
and some truly awful designs have resulted.  I *know* about this,  having
tossed several instances of it over the years and being forced to use it at
work on a day-to-day basis.

Poor engineering of hardware,  though?  I don't know about that.  Sure, 
stuff is "cheaper" by comparison with the way things used to be. 
Telephones are the perfect example of this.  But stuff is also under
tremendous competetive cost pressures,  and I don't see that as ever going
to change.

I'm not sure what you mean about having to maintain a constant inventory of
replacement parts,  there.

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