5 ms·

I think the answer to that lies in the past: what made us walk away from the OSes of the 70s/80s and move to new things? And in some cases, what made us stay?

I think the answer to that lies in the past: what made us walk away from the OSes of the 70s/80s and move to new things? And in some cases, what made us stay? Application inertia is hard to overcome. You really need a killer feature and developer adoption to have a chance.

jacquesm 6y ago
> what made us walk away from the OSes of the 70s/80s and move to new things We never really did.
- core-questions 6y ago
  We keep rediscovering Lisp, maybe one day we'll rediscover the Lisp Machine
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  Hm... the Windows side did, right? I don't think there's any actual traces of MS-DOS left in Windows 10?
  - bluepizza 6y ago
    Parent probably means how NT comes from the minds of the VMS team, and borrows heavily from both VMS and OS/2.
- ethbr0 6y ago
  The cardinal sin of computer science was a failure to understand the importance of defining and enforcing interfaces at module boundaries. The most successful project (internet + web) did a much better job. But legacy wise, we have a breakdown of boundaries at so many levels of the stack.
  - bluepizza 6y ago
    But there wasn’t really any other option back then, was there? Breakdown of boundaries meant squeezing more performance from both memory and CPU which were expensive and lacking.
  - toyg 6y ago
    I’d take exception with the idea that internet/web did a better job of defining interfaces. The web equivalent of Unix (i.e. something we’ll probably never move from, and will haunt us forever) is Javascript.
  - qwertywert_ 6y ago
    I think it's different because internet is literally interconnecting devices, some of which might not even be running an OS per say. Whereas Apple can release a new device on new OS with some custom hardware/drivers and as long as the internet + web parts are compatible with those interfaces there is no issue for customers. Maybe you're right though, but also isn't that what Posix was meant for? Also for things like Wi-Fi, they define those standards but the underlying vendor implementation is totally custom and can get really ugly still, just like an OS.
    - ethbr0 6y ago
      The true benefit of hard interfaces is enforcing modularity, and the benefit of modularity is being able to upgrade a system. (At minimum, emulate & migrate over time) Even "relatively" simple monolithic systems are nightmarishly complex to change. Apple doesn't really give a shit about backwards compatibility, past the bare minimum to keep their platform devs from revolting. POSIX, originally, was intended to provide a solution to every-vendor's-Unix problem. A nice side effect of it was absolutely that we got (mostly) standard interfaces.
- webmaven 6y ago
  > > what made us walk away from the OSes of the 70s/80s and move to new things > We never really did. Sure we did. VMS, MS-DOS, CPM, Netware, etc.
joshspankit 6y ago
I’d argue that Apple’s graphics-first approach did that. OSX set them back in that sense (yes; and also ahead. Don’t @ me), but I personally think there are some current opportunities around making graphics-first (and task-first) operating systems.

jacquesm 6y ago

> what made us walk away from the OSes of the 70s/80s and move to new things We never really did.

core-questions 6y ago
We keep rediscovering Lisp, maybe one day we'll rediscover the Lisp Machine
Wowfunhappy 6y ago
Hm... the Windows side did, right? I don't think there's any actual traces of MS-DOS left in Windows 10?
- bluepizza 6y ago
  Parent probably means how NT comes from the minds of the VMS team, and borrows heavily from both VMS and OS/2.
ethbr0 6y ago
The cardinal sin of computer science was a failure to understand the importance of defining and enforcing interfaces at module boundaries. The most successful project (internet + web) did a much better job. But legacy wise, we have a breakdown of boundaries at so many levels of the stack.
- bluepizza 6y ago
  But there wasn’t really any other option back then, was there? Breakdown of boundaries meant squeezing more performance from both memory and CPU which were expensive and lacking.
- toyg 6y ago
  I’d take exception with the idea that internet/web did a better job of defining interfaces. The web equivalent of Unix (i.e. something we’ll probably never move from, and will haunt us forever) is Javascript.
- qwertywert_ 6y ago
  I think it's different because internet is literally interconnecting devices, some of which might not even be running an OS per say. Whereas Apple can release a new device on new OS with some custom hardware/drivers and as long as the internet + web parts are compatible with those interfaces there is no issue for customers. Maybe you're right though, but also isn't that what Posix was meant for? Also for things like Wi-Fi, they define those standards but the underlying vendor implementation is totally custom and can get really ugly still, just like an OS.
  - ethbr0 6y ago
    The true benefit of hard interfaces is enforcing modularity, and the benefit of modularity is being able to upgrade a system. (At minimum, emulate & migrate over time) Even "relatively" simple monolithic systems are nightmarishly complex to change. Apple doesn't really give a shit about backwards compatibility, past the bare minimum to keep their platform devs from revolting. POSIX, originally, was intended to provide a solution to every-vendor's-Unix problem. A nice side effect of it was absolutely that we got (mostly) standard interfaces.
webmaven 6y ago
> > what made us walk away from the OSes of the 70s/80s and move to new things > We never really did. Sure we did. VMS, MS-DOS, CPM, Netware, etc.

joshspankit 6y ago

I’d argue that Apple’s graphics-first approach did that. OSX set them back in that sense (yes; and also ahead. Don’t @ me), but I personally think there are some current opportunities around making graphics-first (and task-first) operating systems.