DM32 program byte counts

[Maximilian Hohmann]

Hello!

(05-31-2023 08:48 PM)Joe Horn Wrote:  Unlike the HP 32SII, which used exactly 1.5 bytes for every program step (except for literal numbers and equations), the DM32 uses only 1 byte for most program steps...

Those were the days when 1/2 byte made a difference because only 390 bytes were available in total!

For comparison: This afternoon I went to a computer store and bought a new hard drive for backing up our photos. The previous one (2TB) is full. So I got one twice that size (and at roughly 1/4 the price of a DM32) and, once back home, put it in the enclosure of the old one. To my big surprise, the new disk only showed 2TB instead of 4... Some internet research followed and obviously hard disk controllers have - just like pocket calculators - evolved during the last decade. Back when I bought the last disk, no one thought that 3,5inch disks would ever get bigger than 2 Tera Bytes and therefore the controller chips were limited to that figure. So now I have to go again and get a new enclosure for the larger disk. I chose one that can addess up to 12TB, let's see if that will enough when the next bigger disk is due!

As much as I appreciate the research of Joe Horn for it's historical value I must say that I am soooo glad that memory size does not matter any longer when writing programs. Compared to the file size of digital photos (my current camera genrates raw files of 45 MBytes on average, not to talk about it's capability to take 4k videos...) a few bytes more or less of code luckily make no noticeable difference. It is still necessary to program for speed, especially when large datasets like photos or videos are involved, but no longer for size. What a relief!

Regards
Max