Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by mr_toad 2312 days ago
Every phone on the planet has at least one compiler built in.
1 comments

So you measure the number of programs by the number of binary copies?
Without wanting to get involved in the purpose of your rhetorical question (the purpose being some kind of analogy to the StarLink situation)...

How many compilers were there back in the 60s? By codebase or by install count, your choice. Hundreds of codebases and tens of thousands of installs?

How about now? Tens of thousands of codebases and billions of installs?

Do you think this could have happened without lowering the cost of transistors pretty hugely? (circa 3e7-fold price decrease in 50 years)

Seems to me that lowering the cost of transistors DOES increase the number of compilers, whether by counting the number of distinct codebases, or by counting number of users, or counting number of installed copies, or number of times executed, or whatever.