Pain and Glory from the Trenches of the IT World

When it comes to purchasing consumer-grade PCs these days, it’s rare to find a system with a CPU that only has a single core. Most laptops even offer a dual-core CPU. So as software developers, we’re entering a unique era where we can start to employ parallelism in ways that would not have been practical before. In some cases, we will need to exploit this parallelism if we hope to increase the performance of our software.

I’m a staunch supporter of putting old, but working, computers to good use again. Personally, I have repurposed numerous systems back into production after they were deemed to be too old, and replaced with newer hardware. One of my favourite tools for enabling this is NetBSD. As described on the NetBSD Web site, “NetBSD is a free, secure, and highly portable Unix-like Open Source operating system available for many platforms, from large-scale server systems to powerful desktop systems to handheld and embedded devices.”

Jomo Fisher wrote recently, suggesting that symmetric multicore processors are a “dead end”. In turn, an architecture involving one fast processor and many “slave” processors is suggested. But this really isn’t a novel idea by any means. The Cell microprocessor, developed by IBM, Sony and Toshiba, is quite similar in many ways. Not only that, but it already exists, and is being used commercially (including the PlayStation 3 console).

When it comes to programming languages and programming technologies, I think we’re getting close to a point similar to that of twenty years ago. In 1987, many enterprise software systems were being written in languages like C, COBOL, and even PL/I at some shops. Some places were ahead of the curve, and were using Smalltalk.

Last night at the pub, a friend and colleague of mine was telling me of a recent experience he had at a company he was doing some IT work for. I think the lesson learned is a very important one, and thus I wish to share it. But first I’ll describe the situation he encountered.

Today I noticed an article suggesting the use of Puppy Linux on older laptops. I know several people who have also had some success with Puppy Linux, so it may very well be a good Linux distribution to use on older hardware.

We’re beginning to enter a new era in computing. We’re rapidly leaving the days of uniprocessor systems. This has been the trend in the enterprise world for some time now. But with Intel and AMD releasing dual- and quad-core CPUs, and these CPUs being used even in low-end systems, they will soon become near-ubiquitous. Unfortunately, few of our programming languages and development platforms are truly equipped to handle the parallelism that we will be seeing on the typical desktop system in the near future.

Thanks to an article on DesktopLinux.com, I was reading about the Asus Eee PC 701 system. One interesting thing about this system is that it will reportedly run a variant of Xandros Desktop Linux.

I’m sure that most people who follow developments within the open source community have read about Mark Shuttleworth’s high-end, free-software-only laptop idea. While his focus appears to be more ideologically-driven, I think such a laptop would be useful for those of us with more pragmatic concerns.

Understandably, his writing about this topic focuses mainly on the use of Ubuntu-derived distributions on such a laptop. But I think it would also be very valuable for users of systems like FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris and even Haiku.

At far too many companies I have witnessed the effects of homogenized enterprise-grade networks. While many claim that it’s easier to support such networks, I often find that difficult to believe. The benefit brought on by the widespread similarity is often overshadowed by the severe negative consequences when things go wrong.