> Why are we struggling to do now what we once achieved decades ago with far more complexity and far less technology?

"Everybody is stupid and lazy now" isn't the most parsimonious explanation.

Especially from the Gulf of Tonkin/MK Ultra era.

To add to what you said there wasn't a bright line between the Apollo Program and the ICBM program.

Though SpaceX is being funded to build a war-fighting duplicate of Starlink and a weapons-deployment copy of Starship for the Air Force.

Whether or not Armstrong walked on a moon or a set at Elgin Air Force Base wasn't important to the ICBM program, just to TV and politicians. And he refused any TV interviews for decades.

For this inconvenience, the gods of operation systems invented a few things to lighten your burden:
- directories, which have names, and can hold vast amounts of files, with names, and subdirectories with names, which could for example include a version number or name
- a PATH variable, that could point to the executables in such a directory, inconveniently that one is usually called .../bin instead of .../exe - but well, one can adapt, right?
- a LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable, or similar, if PATH is not good enough to load helpers/DLLs and such
- shell scripts, that can set PATH etc. or alias commands if you want to switch quickly
- local .my_tool directories and a help script/command to launch your problematic environment, based on what is configured there ... that is for example what Ruby does

Sorry, there is one thing: you want to run your old Python 2.x Python scrip under 3.y? Well, then you have to port it. Just like I have to port my 1989 K&R C program to my 2025 C++ compiler.

If you have other problems with "old" Versions of "tool X", and are not able to fix installation directories, sym links, PATH and/or LD_LIBRARY_PATH and have a helper script, then fooling around with computers is your wrong hobby.

Try gardening. Or watch stars at night ... something like that.

I have one on my attic, due to lack of a basement.
Unfortunately I ran out of anti matter just recently.

Can I borrow some from you?

A mega watt hour goes for $4 or so ...
So it would be $800 in total.

Unless they paid a phantasy price to boost the company in question.

I did not read the original article, I would not wonder if the summary is grossly wrong or misleading, and Google bought 200MW production capacity and that could equal to some 100 million dollars.

So even if you have miraculous electricity you're still going to be belching heat into the atmosphere.
Just like any heat engine is doing right now.
And in relation of the heat trapping of CO2 and CH4 and water vapour: that is somewhere 10 or 20 digits behind the decimal point. In other words: completely irrelevant.

a) one once snickered that a Saturn V and all the modules on top had less computing power than a washing machine. That was in the 1990s ... assuming a washing machine runs on a 86x88 derivate
b) a phone as a smart phone as many people have has more computing power than the 1990s Cray super computers

Or looking at the time when the Apollo program was running: a phone has more computing power than all the computers combined on the planet had at that time.

What kind of "primitive" computer they settled for is an interesting read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Why did you not read the summary? It would have saved you the time to write this nonsense.

Well,

That "harsh definition" collapses when the "unsafe" code has no bugs.

The point is that the safe code is guaranteed to not have certain kinds of bugs.

So, we have either 10,000 unsafe lines of C, or 9995 safe lines if XYZ, and 5 lines where the XYZ code has to access real physical memory by using real physical memory addresses.

And that would usually be the "registers" of the memory mapped device for which it is the driver.

Yeah, Free Pascal is alive and kicking. Runs even on mobile and Arduino etc.

Ada is a niche language.

And most people never used it, so even the kind of admirers mistake it for a silver bullet, e.g. Ada lacks:
- garbage collections (you need more modern add on's/variations of it)
- object oriented programming got added in Ada95

It's strengths were/is multitasking and precise description of data structures and in that context "bit fiddling".

Of course encapsulation with its package system etc.

It is a "verbose" language. With modern IDEs that should not be a problem, though.

So, one makes a mistake, and you want to blame him?

A pretty low human attitude in my opinion.

You have two different languages and two different compilers, why not pick the one which makes it impossible to make certain kinds of mistakes and pretty hard to make other mistakes?

Then ... only then: it is still the developers fault. But still no reason to blame him.

It would not be any difference if they had used C.

On the other hand if they picked Rust "because of hype", they probably had neglected other languages "because of hate" (or some idiotic flame).

For me personally writing a GUI app - regardless of OS - the first choice would be Java and - yes - Swing.
Second choice would have been to be determined between Qt/C++ and some .Netish language and the modern portable .Net GUI framework. Qt I know a little bit, the .Net GUI FW I don't know ...

Well,

modern C/C++ is full with int8 - int64 or the uint equivalents.

Sometimes I write a typedef. Then my finger is lingering over the return key when I have finished typing "make" ... assuming the computer will explode when the compiler runs over the typedef. Once I woke up at night, from a nightmare assuming typedef got removed from the language(s) ...

So I ran to my computer and check again: it is still there!!

So when I see this ...

        std::vector<std::string> args;

I think, okay, that is one line ... oh, here is another one, oh, and now we are at 20 already ...

What is so damn complicated in writing a typedef? Especially when all that is not std:: but a bunch of user defined types?

In other words: I do not want to see dozens of variable declarations with variations of uint* - but I want a technical or business name for them.

Most of the colleges used to have pubs on campus before the drinking age was raised to 21.

Beer and wine only. Students and faculty frequently had fraternity and lively debates.

Now states take federal highway dollars in exchange for enforcing the 21 age so most drinking occurs in fraternity basements and dorm rooms and it"s often the hardest cheapest booze available leading to alcohol poisoning and death.

So, yeah, states knowingly trade student lives for asphalt subsidies. It's horrendous and that's even if you ignore the absurdity of having an adult with lesser legal rights.

They won't raise everything to 25 because they want what would otherwise be called child soldiers. So they make mental abstractions and kids die. It's crazy.