32-bit to 64-bit - Obsolesence Pains Again?

Posted by Cliff on Tuesday May 10, 2005 @11:05AM from the will-history-repeat-itself dept.

robotsrule asks: "Having been in the computer industry a while I distinctly remember the pain of making the 16-bit to 32-bit transition, when Windows made the change to 32-bit support. Any developer who remember the joys of thunking and other kludges that were meant to help code conversions also remembers the arcane marathon debug sessions too. I have not been keeping up with the latest Microsoft Longhorn technical news, or the plans that the Linux community has for 64-bit platform support. Does anyone out there have a reliable prediction for the amount of system shock we are facing when either Longhorn or 64-bit Linux comes out? Will I lose all my favorite 32-bit development tools again as I watch the backward compatibility support dry up as the 64-bit O/S platforms are adopted? Or are the O/S manufacturers making happy noises about long-term support for existing development languages and tools?"

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Happy noises by bluelip · 2005-05-10 11:08 · Score: 4, Interesting

The happy noises heard are the coins falling into their pockets.

AMd has been good to us lately. i think they'll continue to 'do the right thing'. Maybe they're the Google of hardware.

Mike

--

Yep, I never spell check.
More incorrect spellings can be found he
Re:64-bit linux by jnik · 2005-05-10 12:01 · Score: 5, Interesting

Hmm... but this is different. The 16 to 32-bit PC transition didn't require you to go out and buy new hardware.
Huh!? Sure it did. You couldn't run 32 bit code on a 286. In practice, by the time 32 bit became effectively mandatory (Win95), the sheer horsepower requirements pushed an upgrade more strongly than word size. It'll likely be the same this time around.