7 ms·
You're right that it'd be awesome to have some singularity of vision, but the problem is that a consistent vision requires a small team, and Linux is, fundament
by zeveb 8y ago
You're right that it'd be awesome to have some singularity of vision, but the problem is that a consistent vision requires a small team, and Linux is, fundamentally, built on C — and C is insufficiently powerful to enable a small enough team to build an operating environment and all applications. Maybe it could have been done in SmallTalk, or in Lisp — but not in C. At least, not by anyone who's not insane (c.f. TempleOS).
And the problem with the languages which are powerful enough is that they tend to attract the sort of people who don't play well enough with others to form large enough teams to build such a project (c.f. The Brilliant Bipolar Lisp Programmer). I don't know how to square this circle.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y agoI myself feel that personal computing is dying because the corporate interests have abandoned it, and for reasons you've listed the OSS world hasn't been able to produce a worthwhile alternative. I've go ideas of what could be done to get us back to a place where personal computing was about empowering the user with simple, consistent, and performant abstractions, but there's a lot of ground to cover and I'm only one guy who is mostly out of his depth. I keep looking for a community that I feel is headed in the right direction to get behind, but sadly it doesn't seem to exist. I think I may have to face the possibility that there simply aren't enough people who care about personal computing, or at least the things about it that I believe make it worthwhile, for it to survive.