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I agree with your assessment regarding NeXT. NeXT can be thought of as a pragmatic Smalltalk machine that was adapted to the needs of the higher-education mark

I agree with your assessment regarding NeXT. NeXT can be thought of as a pragmatic Smalltalk machine that was adapted to the needs of the higher-education market that NeXT originally courted up to the release of the NeXT cube. For example, instead of pure Smalltalk with its live object environment, NeXT chose Mach + 4.2BSD as its foundation (which made NeXT able to run Unix software), and it chose Objective-C as the primary programming language for implementing NeXT software, which added Smalltalk's object system to C. I've been knowledgeable of NeXT's history for over 15 years (I was a high school student when I first learned of the history of NeXT), but I'm curious about the decisions that led to NeXT picking Mach as opposed to pure 4.2BSD? I'm aware that Avie Tevanian, who was a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon who worked on Mach, was an early NeXT hire, and I'm also aware that before Steve Jobs founded NeXT, he led a project called the BigMac which would have integrated the Macintosh with Unix (https://lowendmac.com/2013/apples-bigmac-project-failed-precursor-mac-ii-next-cube/ https://lowendmac.com/2013/apples-bigmac-project-failed-prec...). NeXTSTEP could be thought of as a continuation of the BigMac project.

lukeh 6y ago
I haven't watched it in a while, but you will probably enjoy Avie's oral history (along with Blaine Garst and Steve Naroff's). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwCdKU9uYnE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwCdKU9uYnE
spijdar 6y ago
Straight up BSD from the CSRG at Berkeley had an absolutely abysmal virtual memory subsystem. Processes had very small and hardcoded VM size caps in the kernel, and some algorithms that worked okay with 1 or 2MB of RAM were scaling poorly with the massive 4 or 8MB systems showing up. Despite being meant as a research system, Mach2 was effectively 4.3BSD with a good, fast, and scalable VM system. I imagine this had to play a role. (The Mach VM would be reabsorbed into 4.4BSD and inherited by all the *BSDs -- it's since been replaced in all AFAIK, but still interesting)
ngcc_hk 6y ago
I do not know it is earlier or later. The control guy side Steve did meet Linus to adopt linux. Somehow the personality not fix. He moved to BSD. Linus is very opposite to the Mach philosophy. Hence it may go the non-Mach way. I do not think the Mach sounds like Steve level choice. But if he has a hand the simplicity is. And the choice of objective c is also amazing. Still using unix (or linux) is the choice.
- athms 6y ago
  This story is fiction, Linux didn't exist in NeXT's early days. Jobs did offer Torvalds a job at Apple in 2000 to work on OS X. Torvalds turned it down because he despised Mach and refused to stop Linux development, which was a condition attached to the offer.

lukeh 6y ago

I haven't watched it in a while, but you will probably enjoy Avie's oral history (along with Blaine Garst and Steve Naroff's). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwCdKU9uYnE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwCdKU9uYnE

spijdar 6y ago

Straight up BSD from the CSRG at Berkeley had an absolutely abysmal virtual memory subsystem. Processes had very small and hardcoded VM size caps in the kernel, and some algorithms that worked okay with 1 or 2MB of RAM were scaling poorly with the massive 4 or 8MB systems showing up. Despite being meant as a research system, Mach2 was effectively 4.3BSD with a good, fast, and scalable VM system. I imagine this had to play a role. (The Mach VM would be reabsorbed into 4.4BSD and inherited by all the *BSDs -- it's since been replaced in all AFAIK, but still interesting)

ngcc_hk 6y ago

I do not know it is earlier or later. The control guy side Steve did meet Linus to adopt linux. Somehow the personality not fix. He moved to BSD. Linus is very opposite to the Mach philosophy. Hence it may go the non-Mach way. I do not think the Mach sounds like Steve level choice. But if he has a hand the simplicity is. And the choice of objective c is also amazing. Still using unix (or linux) is the choice.

athms 6y ago
This story is fiction, Linux didn't exist in NeXT's early days. Jobs did offer Torvalds a job at Apple in 2000 to work on OS X. Torvalds turned it down because he despised Mach and refused to stop Linux development, which was a condition attached to the offer.