15 ms·

I found the descriptions to be far too abstract and mysterious. I guess it gives the project a sort of cool hacker vibe, but I really just want a few screenshot

I found the descriptions to be far too abstract and mysterious. I guess it gives the project a sort of cool hacker vibe, but I really just want a few screenshots of the interface of the actual OS. As it stands, I have no clue whether it's an actual operating system like Windows/Linux/MacOS or if it just vaguely fits the definition of an OS. I've seen in other comments here that it's both an "Overlay OS" and a VM that you can supposedly run in the cloud or on your laptop. First, what exactly is an "overlay OS"? Am I understanding correctly that this would be running "on top of" an existing OS? Maybe something like the "Seamless mode" in virtual box? Second, how is it being virtualized? Ultimately though, it looks cool, but I think just putting some screenshots front and center instead of abstract graphics explaining metaphors about the design would go a long way.

whalesalad 7y ago
Yeah, I’ve seen this movie before. It’s an art project.
theamk 7y ago
It is a VM as in JVM, not like a VirtualBox. This is a Linux app you run and it listens on a port; you use your browser to connect to it. It was called “overlay os” because it reimplements a bunch of things traditionally provided by OSes. There is a peer to peer network layer, and a storage layer, and a way to execute code.
bronzejaguar 7y ago
It’s software that you run on your computer on macOS or Linux. It provides a VM that only does IO to the underlying system through a typed kernel interface. That’s it. There are blog posts showing the software running on it. I think you’re right about making it concrete instead of metaphorical
SrslyJosh 7y ago
The project is exclusionary by design--instead of using an existing programming language or even keywords/terminology from an existing human language, the creator decided to make everything up, right down to new names for existing symbols. F'r example: gar > hax # hep - kel { sel [ ser ] sig ~ soq ' Have to agree about the screenshots--if there's something useful here, why not show it off?
- belisarius222 7y ago
  Canonical pronunciation for each character is a wonderful thing, and I use it all the time to discuss code. If there's one thing other projects should steal from Urbit, it's this. Spoken programming languages FTW. The pronunciations are no more exclusionary than learning Cyrillic, and the effort pays off.
  - ShamelessC 7y ago
    That actually does sound really cool. I guess we get close to that with names for operators e.g. Python's walrus operator. I can definitely see it being nice to have that sort of granularity.
  - xg15 7y ago
    The pronunciations are no more exclusionary than learning Cyrillic, and the effort pays off. Oddly, I have never been required to learn Cyrillic to use any of many, many other programming languages out there.
    - Grue3 7y ago
      People who don't use Latin alphabet have been forced to learn it to use pretty much any programming language out there.
    - 1D843B67 7y ago
      > Oddly, I have never been required to learn Cyrillic to use any of many, many other programming languages out there. Conversely, people whose native language is written with the Cyrillic script are required to learn the Latin alphabet to use most programming languages.
  - shpx 7y ago
    You can find the rest of the ASCII symbol names (there's 34 in total) here: https://urbit.org/docs/tutorials/hoon/hoon-syntax/ https://urbit.org/docs/tutorials/hoon/hoon-syntax/
- api 7y ago

whalesalad 7y ago

Yeah, I’ve seen this movie before. It’s an art project.

theamk 7y ago

It is a VM as in JVM, not like a VirtualBox. This is a Linux app you run and it listens on a port; you use your browser to connect to it. It was called “overlay os” because it reimplements a bunch of things traditionally provided by OSes. There is a peer to peer network layer, and a storage layer, and a way to execute code.

bronzejaguar 7y ago

It’s software that you run on your computer on macOS or Linux. It provides a VM that only does IO to the underlying system through a typed kernel interface. That’s it. There are blog posts showing the software running on it. I think you’re right about making it concrete instead of metaphorical

SrslyJosh 7y ago

The project is exclusionary by design--instead of using an existing programming language or even keywords/terminology from an existing human language, the creator decided to make everything up, right down to new names for existing symbols. F'r example: gar > hax # hep - kel { sel [ ser ] sig ~ soq ' Have to agree about the screenshots--if there's something useful here, why not show it off?

belisarius222 7y ago
Canonical pronunciation for each character is a wonderful thing, and I use it all the time to discuss code. If there's one thing other projects should steal from Urbit, it's this. Spoken programming languages FTW. The pronunciations are no more exclusionary than learning Cyrillic, and the effort pays off.
- ShamelessC 7y ago
  That actually does sound really cool. I guess we get close to that with names for operators e.g. Python's walrus operator. I can definitely see it being nice to have that sort of granularity.
- xg15 7y ago
  The pronunciations are no more exclusionary than learning Cyrillic, and the effort pays off. Oddly, I have never been required to learn Cyrillic to use any of many, many other programming languages out there.
  - Grue3 7y ago
    People who don't use Latin alphabet have been forced to learn it to use pretty much any programming language out there.
  - 1D843B67 7y ago
    > Oddly, I have never been required to learn Cyrillic to use any of many, many other programming languages out there. Conversely, people whose native language is written with the Cyrillic script are required to learn the Latin alphabet to use most programming languages.
- shpx 7y ago
  You can find the rest of the ASCII symbol names (there's 34 in total) here: https://urbit.org/docs/tutorials/hoon/hoon-syntax/ https://urbit.org/docs/tutorials/hoon/hoon-syntax/
api 7y ago