| device independence
When you're developing a program,
especially a game or multimedia title, the toughest element to deal with
is the hardware that will run it. Complex animation, color-rich graphics,
and video and sound can all clog up or choke because of conflicting
hardware standards. Device independence is the developer's ideal: you
develop your application and let the operating system and its device
drivers figure out how to make the hardware handle it. At the very least,
device independence requires hardware standards such as VGA and decent
drivers. APIs and hardware abstraction layer standards are a more robust
approach to device independence. |