Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Sun Cooltols



I have had an epiphany today. I had to port quickly something from Linux to Solaris.
I had some alternatives as SunStudio 12, build my own GCC for sparc or use the GCC4SS Cooltools. I went on the last path as the code generator is the same as for Sun Studio and more optimized. I modified nothing in the makefiles and everything worked as a charm.

Thank you, Sun Microsystems!

Monday, March 16, 2009

The World Is Flat

I have finished reading Thomas Friedman's "The World Is Flat". It was a nice book.
I have witnessed personally most of the things described in the book (including details as Fractint).
However I discovered how insignificant is Romania on a global scale. Despite being a promising destination for call centers and software outsourcing, the biggest European shoe maker, Romania is never mentioned in the book. The reason is simple - it is too small to matter. Comparing Romania with India for software or China for production of goods we Romania tends to zero. In India there are thousands of readily certified low payed software engineers. In Romania are some, but they are hard to find and more expensive. As for cheap work in other domains the EU admission increased the wages and therefore it is no longer so attractive for foreign outsourcing.
The conclusion I drove from this book is that in a flat world we should build something of our own. It does not really matter what but we have to be perfect in doing it. Otherwise we will melt into a flat sea of nothingness or, as Friedman said, we would finish by selling hamburgers one to the other.