Oregon Trail was the only game I used the Turbo for, but I think it detected the speed, as the best way to run the game was to start the game with turbo, then turn it off when you hit the trail.
This way I could finish the game in 5 minutes or so without having to stop for any supplies.
I remember batch compiles. I used to submit a compile, fix a couple errors or make some changes, and submit another compile about the time the first one was finishing. Then I’d go look at the output from the first compile and fix errors from that compile in the code I’d just submitted. Lather, rinse, repeat.
It sure wasn’t the most efficient use of time, but it made me appreciate PC development when I made the switch.
Funny article. You can interpret it anyway you want 
I think responsive software is overrated. Don’t understand me wrong: I like my software being responsive. Google Chrome rocks. I also tell my co-workers how great VB6 was? Why? Just fire it up, and see how quick things run! That is a great difference to say Visual Studio 2008…
But the overrated part: I don’t think (most) people are getting more productive with quicker reponsive programs. Responsive software is more about being spoiled (in a good way, that is). I feel good about Google Chrome, because it respons quick to my needs. But do I read more blogs? Do I answer more stackoverflow questions? Do I write more emails? You know the answer. I think that learning to type with ten fingers is more productive…
So my thinking of software responsiveness as being overrated is about productiveness. That’s crap. But valueing your customers, by letting your software being responsive? That’s more like it.
ultima 7 on a 486 definitely needed the turbo button 
For me, it’s slow network speeds that play with my emotions.
In addition to that, the worse status message on Earth tends to ruin my day: Web site found. Waiting for reply…
Wait. Are we supposed to have faster hardware or are we supposed to develop interactively (whatever that means)?
Or are we supposed to have faster hardware so we can develop interactively.
Is that a comparison to developing blindly? What does interactive mean?
I am a little lost on this one.
Then I got Turbo Pascal and life was forever changed. I could write, compile and debug applications virtually instantly and my need for speed has never looked back.
If you still desire fast compile speed and native code, Delphi 2009 has it. Actually, so does Delphi 2007 and Delphi 2006. In case you are not familiar, Delphi is the successor to Turbo Pascal that writes native code for Windows. I love C#, but I just can’t find a reason to stop using Delphi…it’s awesome!
Yeah, right. We need faster computers to accomplish more write-crappy-code - compile-it - see-it-doesnt-work - tweak-crappy-code-cycles per hour. Surely a very good investment to crank out more crappy software per hour.
Note: Proper design takes time, no matter how fast your hardware is.
But these days blazing fast stupidity seems to catch up with thinking much better.
Worse slow down for me is faulty error messages from Sql Server 2000 nowadays. Sql Server 2000 just sucks when there is any kind of issue. It gives the wrong line numbers and misdiagnoses the cause of the issue constantly. Sql Server 2005 is a HUGE improvement since the CLR is hosted in the database engine so I can watch sprocs execute line by line. Much much better feedback to track down and fix errors.
What’s keeping you from going as fast as you can? As a user? As a software developer?
The way I see it, nobody cares much about optimizing today, making pretty much everything slow and bloated. Songbird (the Mozilla Foundation media player) takes over 100 Mb for playing a 4-5 Mb song. Firefox used to kill my PC due to some is not a memory leak, is a feature bug. Eclipse (and pretty much everything Java) will laugh at you if you try to run it with 1 Gb or less.
The sad truth is: nobody cares about fast anymore. If your code runs in the span of a lifetime, then is good enough for everyone. True, you have gems like utorrent (6 Mb in memory), but if you mention it everyone will give you the but our 250 Mb framework makes programming easier talk and walk away. It doesn’t seem to matter the fact that your 10-seconds function could take only 2, everyone is happy waiting those 10 seconds.
On the other hand, I do most of my web design in vim/notepad, so maybe I’m not the best one to talk about the efficiency/effort ratio…
Oh, the memories :-). I’ve had several computers with a Turbo button, and the only time you wanted to slow down the computer was playing games.
However, sometimes you actually improve usability by slowing down your application (on the ultra-fast, modern computers).
But it is a good thing that it is no longer the user that has to control this.
Hey, the turbo button still exists!
I have a laptop which is a few years old and it has a button that, for all intents and purposes, can be considered a turbo button. While it’s purpose is now to save power, it’s implementation is basically the same.
VB6 is way faster than Visual Studio 2008… It is like instant vs slow.
In high school (~'93) a friend of mine had his PC for a good year or so before he realized one day that the turbo button was off.
So, of course, he turned it on.
I guess that’s ONE way to upgrade your machine cheaply.
I saw an article that compared the performance of a 1986 Mac and a 2007 PC. For the most mundane tasks – booting, launching Word, opening a file, doing a search and replace, etc. – the old Mac was slightly faster. We’ve squandered most of the benefits of Moore’s law on bloatware.
John on December 23, 2008 05:50 AM
And then you realize the one thing that has been driving the massive acceleration of computer hardware capabilities: Computer Gaming
Only mildly related but you might get a kick out of it. A friend of ours about 10 years ago drove a pretty small oldish car (like a Chevy Sprint or something can’t remember the exact model). We were driving through some hills in July and the car was a bit sluggish, so he as he pushed the button to turn off the A/C he said turbo button. And the car sped up a bit. It was funny at the time, of course we were all EE’s and CSci’s in the car.
what’s keeping me from going as fast as i can? a pentium 4.
What’s keeping you from going as fast as you can? As a user? As a software developer?
The inabililty to put a 10,000 RPM 300GB WD Velociraptor drive into my Mac Pro. 150GB fits, 300GB doesn’t 
(connector was moved 1/2 inch)
I think you’ve just made the argument for me on why I prefer vim and the linux command line over visual studio, even on modern PCs. I think its also why the command line still survives to this day as a viable development option despite tons of development in GUI/IDE development. Some would rather
For me, I feel so much more productive in vim/command line than in visual studio, and I spend less time dealing with visual studio crashing explorer or just waiting forever for some debug session to stop. ugh. Give me the linux command line any day. So much simpler, gets the job done, fewer do-dads to hog my PC’s resources.
Sure if visual studio was as rock solid, fast, and stable as the linux command line I would trust it and I would be so much more productive. In many ways visual studio is a vastly superior tool. I mean I can rename variables in once click (with visual assist x) and the change propagates everywhere. That’s cool! But search and replace isn’t that much worse.
I’m in the minority here maybe, but I’ve found that being forced into a relatively slow development cycle can be beneficial on a large project, or one where the target application takes a long time to run … it makes you think more about what you’re doing.
However, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t have good tools on a responsive machine, that level of interaction is still important.