For those looking for a bootloader

[Love4Boobies]

Age doesnt make code outdated.

Thats not true at all. Would you consider the origional doom up to date? Can you say that a game like Crysis doesn't have better graphics, physics, etc?

And when it comes to operating systems, thats even less true. If you have a Core i7 and you run 16-bit DOS on it, it will run in real mode on one core of a quad-core, hyperthreaded, 64-bit processor. That I would consider out of date. There are algorithms and solutions to problems (ie A* or sempahores) that will continue to work into the future, but anything tied to hardware (ie an OS or bootloader) can be outdated very quickly.

Multiboot doesn't account for 64-bit processors, multiple processors, or anything that is quite common on today's computers. That does make it out of date.

Would you consider Unix/Linux outdated? It is older than Doom. It appears that you actualyl agree with me, that it isn't AGE that makes code outdated, but lack of useful features or perhaps lack of continued support.

I would call UNIX way outdated...

[JohnnyTheDon]

Age doesnt make code outdated.

Thats not true at all. Would you consider the origional doom up to date? Can you say that a game like Crysis doesn't have better graphics, physics, etc?

And when it comes to operating systems, thats even less true. If you have a Core i7 and you run 16-bit DOS on it, it will run in real mode on one core of a quad-core, hyperthreaded, 64-bit processor. That I would consider out of date. There are algorithms and solutions to problems (ie A* or sempahores) that will continue to work into the future, but anything tied to hardware (ie an OS or bootloader) can be outdated very quickly.

Multiboot doesn't account for 64-bit processors, multiple processors, or anything that is quite common on today's computers. That does make it out of date.

Would you consider Unix/Linux outdated? It is older than Doom. It appears that you actualyl agree with me, that it isn't AGE that makes code outdated, but lack of useful features or perhaps lack of continued support.

No, because if you compare the current Unix/Linux kernels to ones created long ago, they have a lot of new code added on and a lot of old code removed/redone. Are you saying that the 0.0.0.1 Linux kernel and the current 2.6.28.6 share much code?

It is most certainly true: Quicksort and heapsort are dated to the '60s. Bakery algorithm is a bit more recent but still equally valid. And everybody is still using that code over and over, for good reason. And I seriously doubt you want to call either outdated, even though they are very old indeed.

I know. That is why I said:

There are algorithms and solutions to problems (ie A* or sempahores) that will continue to work into the future, but anything tied to hardware (ie an OS or bootloader) can be outdated very quickly.

I'm not saying algorithms get outdated, I'm saying quite a bit of code does. Code implementing algorithms like quicksort doesn't go out of date, but code that uses APM will. The fact that multiboot ignores 64-bit and MP systems that are common in new computers (a quick search shows that Dell sells systems with Core 2 Duos for $579 and Core 2 Quads for $699) makes it outdated.

EDIT: I ain't bad at no grammar.

[JJeronimo]

I sorry Multiboot for not providing a proper and complete memory map because it's old.

JJ

[NReed]

And even to say algorithms are a golden bullet that do not age is incorrect. For example, the md2 hash function is largely outdated, due to the fact that it's security function is non-existent ( even the author agrees ). Algorithms can become obsolete by newer and "better" algorithms.

Which was exactly my point - It is not age that makes things outdated, it's the presence or absence of better variants (which is why md2 is outdated and quicksort is not) and the validity of the underlying assumptions (which is why dos is outdated and *nix is not). And in both examples, age would disagree.

Ah alright, we agree, I was under the impression that you said algorithms never become outdated.

Algorithms and code are not the same.

Then lets talk about the C implementation of quicksort

haha, while I agree my example was not fair, I think ignoring the relatively small crowd of OS/embedded programmers, most people would consider C itself fairly outdated (debatable and I realize it). But a C implementation could be considered "outdated", because it can't always be used on C++ classes ( because it doesn't do deep copies ) and it could not be multithreaded ( the quicksort thread gets blocked, another thread modifies an element ). Now I agree this is using the wrong tool for the problem, a C++ implementation does.. "improve" the C implementation for C++.

As another side note, a 5-10 year old c implementation won't take advantage of optimizations that are now possible via SIMD etc or multi-threading that is now possible.