5 ms·

Not necessarily. After all, Unix was built by brillant kids who glorified shortcuts and brilliant hacks.

by vorador 17y ago

strlen 17y ago
I understand this is an ironic thing for me to say, given my alias, but is UNIX (along with C and C-descended languages) the best we could do?
- peterwwillis 17y ago
  For the PDP-7/11? Probably.
  - strlen 17y ago
    Certainly agreed, it's amazing what they've accomplished on such limited machines, just it shouldn't be held as a pinnacle of engineering or computer science (else, why would the people who built it be at working on plan9 and go?)
- jmtulloss 17y ago
  The best we can do is usually not the goal. Good enough is the goal. People look at great products and say that sentiment isn't true, but you always have to release. Take the first iPhone. When it came to feature checklists, it was embarrassed by every competitor out there. It nailed the interface though, and that was Apple's definition of "good enough". The shipped, took the industry by storm, and have since added most of those checklist features that everybody thought they needed in the first place.
  - gridspy 17y ago
    Every feature you add makes the menu more complex. There comes a point where removing a feature is itself a feature.
hello_moto 17y ago
Were they kids though? I thought they already grew beards and some might have a tiny bit of grey hair here and there... There may be beautiful hacks in UNIX but the building principals (UNIX Philosophies) lives on and I don't think kids these days that go straight into startup even know these things.
strlen 17y ago
The other thing is that UNIX wasn't built a start-up, it was built at Bell Labs. Google could be argued t be a modern bell-labs. Most modern start-ups avoid, at all costs, any systems programming (or doing anything at all beyond using a scripting language to read text from a database and display it on a screen). Note, however, I said most. There are startups solving serious scientific and engineering challenges. It's just "start-up" does not equate "lasting technological/scientific contribution".
- nostrademons 17y ago
  "Google could be argued t be a modern bell-labs." Particularly given the ridiculous number of ex-Bell-Labs employees at Google. One of the SVPs of Engineering at Google was formerly the VP in charge of the organization that birthed C, C++, UNIX, etc.
- gridspy 17y ago
  I think the key here is to avoid doing any work at all that is not your value proposition. If scripting languages are good enough and will benefit you, use them. We use Python, Twisted, Django, Matplotlib, JQuery, Movable Type, Postgresql all for this reason. Even our firmware is built as much as possible on a 3rd party neworking library and high level hardware building blocks.
  - strlen 17y ago
    That's great for you (if it's money you're after), but it does make the start-up fairly uninteresting to someone who's interested in systems level development (and not just glueing together a product based on work others have done). Generally, top scientists/engineers are not motivated by money, which means given an offer from a typical ("glue a product together") start-up and Google they'd choose Google, unless they're looking for the "start-up experience". If you want top technical talent (who will always be able to find fulfilling and challenging work at the whatever the current Google-like company is, e.g. SGI in early 90s, Netscape in mid 90s, etc), you have to give them top technical challenges (which is how these companies have themselves been able to compete for talent when they were start-ups).

Not necessarily. After all, Unix was built by brillant kids who glorified shortcuts and brilliant hacks.

by vorador 17y ago

Not necessarily. After all, Unix was built by brillant kids who glorified shortcuts and brilliant hacks.

I understand this is an ironic thing for me to say, given my alias, but is UNIX (along with C and C-descended languages) the best we could do?

peterwwillis 17y ago
For the PDP-7/11? Probably.
- strlen 17y ago
  Certainly agreed, it's amazing what they've accomplished on such limited machines, just it shouldn't be held as a pinnacle of engineering or computer science (else, why would the people who built it be at working on plan9 and go?)
jmtulloss 17y ago
The best we can do is usually not the goal. Good enough is the goal. People look at great products and say that sentiment isn't true, but you always have to release. Take the first iPhone. When it came to feature checklists, it was embarrassed by every competitor out there. It nailed the interface though, and that was Apple's definition of "good enough". The shipped, took the industry by storm, and have since added most of those checklist features that everybody thought they needed in the first place.
- gridspy 17y ago
  Every feature you add makes the menu more complex. There comes a point where removing a feature is itself a feature.

hello_moto 17y ago

Were they kids though? I thought they already grew beards and some might have a tiny bit of grey hair here and there... There may be beautiful hacks in UNIX but the building principals (UNIX Philosophies) lives on and I don't think kids these days that go straight into startup even know these things.

strlen 17y ago

The other thing is that UNIX wasn't built a start-up, it was built at Bell Labs. Google could be argued t be a modern bell-labs. Most modern start-ups avoid, at all costs, any systems programming (or doing anything at all beyond using a scripting language to read text from a database and display it on a screen). Note, however, I said most. There are startups solving serious scientific and engineering challenges. It's just "start-up" does not equate "lasting technological/scientific contribution".

nostrademons 17y ago
"Google could be argued t be a modern bell-labs." Particularly given the ridiculous number of ex-Bell-Labs employees at Google. One of the SVPs of Engineering at Google was formerly the VP in charge of the organization that birthed C, C++, UNIX, etc.
gridspy 17y ago
I think the key here is to avoid doing any work at all that is not your value proposition. If scripting languages are good enough and will benefit you, use them. We use Python, Twisted, Django, Matplotlib, JQuery, Movable Type, Postgresql all for this reason. Even our firmware is built as much as possible on a 3rd party neworking library and high level hardware building blocks.
- strlen 17y ago
  That's great for you (if it's money you're after), but it does make the start-up fairly uninteresting to someone who's interested in systems level development (and not just glueing together a product based on work others have done). Generally, top scientists/engineers are not motivated by money, which means given an offer from a typical ("glue a product together") start-up and Google they'd choose Google, unless they're looking for the "start-up experience". If you want top technical talent (who will always be able to find fulfilling and challenging work at the whatever the current Google-like company is, e.g. SGI in early 90s, Netscape in mid 90s, etc), you have to give them top technical challenges (which is how these companies have themselves been able to compete for talent when they were start-ups).