OK so I found this argument amusing but really irritating. Just a few questions and thoughts:
1. Do you do a lot of numerical programming (like, solving PDEs, large linear systems, optimization, etc.)? Not just calculating the normal of a polygon.
2. Have you ever written numerical code in teams consisting of applied mathematicians, engineers and computer scientists?
I know that the engineers I work with would give you REALLY strange looks if you wanted them to learn OCaml. I'm pretty sure the mathematicians would too. C++ is a language all of these people have been exposed to. If you're doing hardcore number crunching you're writing in Fortran, C, or C++. I know of companies that were crippled by writing their libraries/applications by hand in ASM or less popular languages. It's unmaintainable. You loose the person who originally wrote the code and you're totally out of luck. You not only need to find a new bright engineer but one that knows that language well enough to debug someone else's work.
3. Have you ever maintained large numerical codes that require constant change, new features and tweaking?
OO techniques can come in very handy... Sure you can do it in C but you can really start kicking ass with a well defined subset of C++. Need more rope? Expand your subset and point out the features of the language you'll be using to the rest of the team. Is someone writing unmaintainable code? Slap 'em in the face! At the most basic level you have a language that's close to one of your advocated languages: C. You can start there and build upwards slowly depending on the experience of your team.
4. Have you worked on codes that run so long that achieving even a 3% speedup is seen as a great step forward? I'd be more than willing to bet my Intel compiler will run circles around your D compiler. Yes, circles.
5. Did C++ touch you in a bad place when you were a young programmer? Why are you arguing this with such vitriol? Can you not accept that some people _like_ C++ and all the rope that it has to offer? Personally, I have yet to get bit in the ass by C++. From the passion you apply to your arguments I must be a freakin' genius.
Good point. I think Seagate already has something similar but it grew out of their HAMR research.
I suppose the main reason all this is worrying though is that you have something sliding over your data at 50m/s. All that's protecting the integrity of the data is a layer of lubricant (~1.5 nanometers or a few molecules thick) and a layer of diamond like carbon (DLC, ~1 nm). If your lubricant layer gets too thick, you might have trouble reading or writing data to the magnetic layer of your disk. If your lubricant layer gets too thin, you risk cutting through your DLC. At that point, it's time to restore from backups. It's just a very delicate problem.
The sky certainly isn't falling but it's a tough game. Luckily there are a lot of smart people playing. It's looking like flash will probably win over the mobile storage market (cost, power consumption, robustness). It'll be fun to see what happens on our desktops and servers.
Exactly. I'm wondering who these experts are anyways as we're about to hit a major wall in the next decade. We've been reducing the spacing between the transducer (read-write element) and magnetic media in HDD for about 50 years now. Each year the transducer gets closer to the disk and, as a result, storage densities have been going up. However, within a few years, we won't be able to get closer without having to worry about intermolecular forces that come into play at spacings below 5nm. These can cause serious flying problems for a slider in a hard disk drive.
To get closer to the disk, many researchers are looking at actually running a disk with the slider in contact with the disk. From a mechanics standpoint, that's just frightening. When you think about the friction and wear this will cause on the nanometer thin films on a disk platter, the outlook it isn't all that good...
Now I will say that people have been predicting the demise of the hard disk drive for decades. For example, they never thought it would be possible to fly a slider at spacings less than the mean free path of air (~65nm) but HDD sliders currently fly with a minimum spacing of about 7-12nm. HDD Engineers have been able to overcome every major technical of the last 50 years and have, so far, won the cost per GB storage war. Even so, I'm curious how they'll get over the hurdles of the next decade as they're looking pretty frightening.
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OK so I found this argument amusing but really irritating. Just a few questions and thoughts:
1. Do you do a lot of numerical programming (like, solving PDEs, large linear systems, optimization, etc.)? Not just calculating the normal of a polygon.
2. Have you ever written numerical code in teams consisting of applied mathematicians, engineers and computer scientists?
I know that the engineers I work with would give you REALLY strange looks if you wanted them to learn OCaml. I'm pretty sure the mathematicians would too. C++ is a language all of these people have been exposed to. If you're doing hardcore number crunching you're writing in Fortran, C, or C++. I know of companies that were crippled by writing their libraries/applications by hand in ASM or less popular languages. It's unmaintainable. You loose the person who originally wrote the code and you're totally out of luck. You not only need to find a new bright engineer but one that knows that language well enough to debug someone else's work.
3. Have you ever maintained large numerical codes that require constant change, new features and tweaking?
OO techniques can come in very handy... Sure you can do it in C but you can really start kicking ass with a well defined subset of C++. Need more rope? Expand your subset and point out the features of the language you'll be using to the rest of the team. Is someone writing unmaintainable code? Slap 'em in the face! At the most basic level you have a language that's close to one of your advocated languages: C. You can start there and build upwards slowly depending on the experience of your team.
4. Have you worked on codes that run so long that achieving even a 3% speedup is seen as a great step forward? I'd be more than willing to bet my Intel compiler will run circles around your D compiler. Yes, circles.
5. Did C++ touch you in a bad place when you were a young programmer? Why are you arguing this with such vitriol? Can you not accept that some people _like_ C++ and all the rope that it has to offer? Personally, I have yet to get bit in the ass by C++. From the passion you apply to your arguments I must be a freakin' genius.
Good point. I think Seagate already has something similar but it grew out of their HAMR research.
I suppose the main reason all this is worrying though is that you have something sliding over your data at 50m/s. All that's protecting the integrity of the data is a layer of lubricant (~1.5 nanometers or a few molecules thick) and a layer of diamond like carbon (DLC, ~1 nm). If your lubricant layer gets too thick, you might have trouble reading or writing data to the magnetic layer of your disk. If your lubricant layer gets too thin, you risk cutting through your DLC. At that point, it's time to restore from backups. It's just a very delicate problem.
The sky certainly isn't falling but it's a tough game. Luckily there are a lot of smart people playing. It's looking like flash will probably win over the mobile storage market (cost, power consumption, robustness). It'll be fun to see what happens on our desktops and servers.
Exactly. I'm wondering who these experts are anyways as we're about to hit a major wall in the next decade. We've been reducing the spacing between the transducer (read-write element) and magnetic media in HDD for about 50 years now. Each year the transducer gets closer to the disk and, as a result, storage densities have been going up. However, within a few years, we won't be able to get closer without having to worry about intermolecular forces that come into play at spacings below 5nm. These can cause serious flying problems for a slider in a hard disk drive.
To get closer to the disk, many researchers are looking at actually running a disk with the slider in contact with the disk. From a mechanics standpoint, that's just frightening. When you think about the friction and wear this will cause on the nanometer thin films on a disk platter, the outlook it isn't all that good...
Now I will say that people have been predicting the demise of the hard disk drive for decades. For example, they never thought it would be possible to fly a slider at spacings less than the mean free path of air (~65nm) but HDD sliders currently fly with a minimum spacing of about 7-12nm. HDD Engineers have been able to overcome every major technical of the last 50 years and have, so far, won the cost per GB storage war. Even so, I'm curious how they'll get over the hurdles of the next decade as they're looking pretty frightening.
A good investigation can be found at http://www.swallowtail.org/naughty-intel.html