5 ms·

There's not much new under the sun. Virtual machines were created in the 1960s, for example. The wisdom I was given by an old hand is that the computer industr

There's not much new under the sun. Virtual machines were created in the 1960s, for example. The wisdom I was given by an old hand is that the computer industry goes through a cycle of focus: disk, network, CPU - at any given time the currently 'hot' technology is targeting one of these hot spots. I am not sure I have lived long enough to see this play out for myself but it seemed that there was some truth to it when I first heard it.

ipdashc 4y ago
> the computer industry goes through a cycle of focus: disk, network, CPU - at any given time the currently 'hot' technology is targeting one of these hot spots Which would you say we're in now?
- haimez 4y ago
  Network, and to a lesser extent: CPU (or more generally, compute) in large scale deployments as a result of possibilities enabled by networking. We’re calling this the cloud, but the first iteration of “the cloud” started with storage enabling efficient, reliable access of data storage being decoupled from individual nodes. Now we take that for granted- so maybe the current era is “all of the above, but storage started to feel like a solved problem”
  - tharkun__ 4y ago
    We’re calling this the cloud, but the first iteration of “the cloud” started with storage enabling efficient, reliable access of data storage being decoupled from individual nodes This is exactly what I dislike about all this "look, shiny, new" kind of thing. No, networked storage that is decoupled from compute nodes is not a cloud thing. Sure the cloud does that too. But data centers all over the globe used EMC^2 Symmetrix for a long time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMC_Symmetrix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMC_Symmetrix
    - indymike 4y ago
      The novel part is selling it.
- djbusby 4y ago
  I think CPU is currently in GPU cycle, learning to use all those cores for cool stuff not just fog and magic hashes.
- doctor_eval 4y ago
  SSR makes me think we’re going back to doing everything on the server, after quite a few years focusing on the client. I think this might be the third go-around in my career.
  - indymike 4y ago
    I suspect we're on the way back to the client, about the time we get cheap 128GB RAM SOCs.
tharkun__ 4y ago
You're absolutely correct. Had this moment w/ my dad, when I started playing around with early VMware and excitedly told him about it and he was like "Well, yeah we use that all the time at work. It's called VM/370" (current: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z/VM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z/VM but see list of historical versions) What I just really dislike is all the fanfare and marketing blah. It seems that we can't have a proper conversation about such things. Performance and bottlenecks are always the same. Something is your current bottleneck. You focus on getting rid of that bottleneck and you discover the next bottleneck. There is always one. People will always take advantage of the bottleneck removed and hit the next one. Can't we just openly talk about the fact that we've removed one and the new bottleneck is of a different 'type' (like you say, disk, network, CPU). Do we always have to pretend like something truly new has been found? Can't we acknowledge what we're really doing there? Different thing, same vein: The recent posts on here about finite automata (aka state machines). These are the bread and butter of computer science. You learn about those in every computer science 101. And in 101.2 you learn about pushdown automata because finite automata can't do everything you might need (i.e. they can't count). Yet the discussion here and the linked articles and frameworks linked to sound like they're completely novel.
- ctxc 4y ago
  Can you share links to resources you recommend about these topics? I'll Google it, but still :)
  - tharkun__ 4y ago
    You mean FSMs? I don't really have any links about those, no. I learned about them in university. That's been a while and all of that info was in paper form. But I'm sure there are great online resources nowadays. Just in general I do see in my history this which came through HN a while ago. I never read any of that but it seems a lot like what we did in computer science in uni from a cursory glance: http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/focs.html http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/focs.html
- majkinetor 4y ago
  It might not be the same. You see, context and surrounding technolgy changes rapidlly and so ideas that were not feasible 50 years ago (or had some other type of problem) might be feasible today. History can't repeat because underlying technology always moves forward and that change is so important that it invalidates almost anything to be clasified as total repete.
jjav 4y ago
> There's not much new under the sun. I wish every CS curriculum had a mandatory course on the history of CS. Covering how many times the same ideas have been "new" and then discarded as not useful, only to be rediscovered. It could help reduce the amount of churn in the industry, so we can move forward instead of forgetting and relearning the same things over and over.
- madmax108 4y ago
  Mandatory link to Bret Victor's "The Future of Programming" talk which discusses some of the same ideas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pTEmbeENF4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pTEmbeENF4
  - jiriro 4y ago
    What’s the year of this presentation? There’s 1973 on the slide. Is this possible? It looks like a joke but I’m not sure.
    - belfalas 4y ago
      It's after the year 2000 - definitely a joke on Bret's part. He is very big on keeping computer history alive and contextualizing things. You're meant to pretend Bret is giving the presentation in 1973; e.g. his comment about "but there's no way Intel will corner the market and stifle innovation, right?"

ipdashc 4y ago

> the computer industry goes through a cycle of focus: disk, network, CPU - at any given time the currently 'hot' technology is targeting one of these hot spots Which would you say we're in now?

haimez 4y ago
Network, and to a lesser extent: CPU (or more generally, compute) in large scale deployments as a result of possibilities enabled by networking. We’re calling this the cloud, but the first iteration of “the cloud” started with storage enabling efficient, reliable access of data storage being decoupled from individual nodes. Now we take that for granted- so maybe the current era is “all of the above, but storage started to feel like a solved problem”
- tharkun__ 4y ago
  We’re calling this the cloud, but the first iteration of “the cloud” started with storage enabling efficient, reliable access of data storage being decoupled from individual nodes This is exactly what I dislike about all this "look, shiny, new" kind of thing. No, networked storage that is decoupled from compute nodes is not a cloud thing. Sure the cloud does that too. But data centers all over the globe used EMC^2 Symmetrix for a long time: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMC_Symmetrix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EMC_Symmetrix
  - indymike 4y ago
    The novel part is selling it.
djbusby 4y ago
I think CPU is currently in GPU cycle, learning to use all those cores for cool stuff not just fog and magic hashes.
doctor_eval 4y ago
SSR makes me think we’re going back to doing everything on the server, after quite a few years focusing on the client. I think this might be the third go-around in my career.
- indymike 4y ago
  I suspect we're on the way back to the client, about the time we get cheap 128GB RAM SOCs.

tharkun__ 4y ago

You're absolutely correct. Had this moment w/ my dad, when I started playing around with early VMware and excitedly told him about it and he was like "Well, yeah we use that all the time at work. It's called VM/370" (current: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z/VM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z/VM but see list of historical versions) What I just really dislike is all the fanfare and marketing blah. It seems that we can't have a proper conversation about such things. Performance and bottlenecks are always the same. Something is your current bottleneck. You focus on getting rid of that bottleneck and you discover the next bottleneck. There is always one. People will always take advantage of the bottleneck removed and hit the next one. Can't we just openly talk about the fact that we've removed one and the new bottleneck is of a different 'type' (like you say, disk, network, CPU). Do we always have to pretend like something truly new has been found? Can't we acknowledge what we're really doing there? Different thing, same vein: The recent posts on here about finite automata (aka state machines). These are the bread and butter of computer science. You learn about those in every computer science 101. And in 101.2 you learn about pushdown automata because finite automata can't do everything you might need (i.e. they can't count). Yet the discussion here and the linked articles and frameworks linked to sound like they're completely novel.

ctxc 4y ago
Can you share links to resources you recommend about these topics? I'll Google it, but still :)
- tharkun__ 4y ago
  You mean FSMs? I don't really have any links about those, no. I learned about them in university. That's been a while and all of that info was in paper form. But I'm sure there are great online resources nowadays. Just in general I do see in my history this which came through HN a while ago. I never read any of that but it seems a lot like what we did in computer science in uni from a cursory glance: http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/focs.html http://infolab.stanford.edu/~ullman/focs.html
majkinetor 4y ago
It might not be the same. You see, context and surrounding technolgy changes rapidlly and so ideas that were not feasible 50 years ago (or had some other type of problem) might be feasible today. History can't repeat because underlying technology always moves forward and that change is so important that it invalidates almost anything to be clasified as total repete.

jjav 4y ago

> There's not much new under the sun. I wish every CS curriculum had a mandatory course on the history of CS. Covering how many times the same ideas have been "new" and then discarded as not useful, only to be rediscovered. It could help reduce the amount of churn in the industry, so we can move forward instead of forgetting and relearning the same things over and over.

madmax108 4y ago
Mandatory link to Bret Victor's "The Future of Programming" talk which discusses some of the same ideas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pTEmbeENF4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pTEmbeENF4
- jiriro 4y ago
  What’s the year of this presentation? There’s 1973 on the slide. Is this possible? It looks like a joke but I’m not sure.
  - belfalas 4y ago
    It's after the year 2000 - definitely a joke on Bret's part. He is very big on keeping computer history alive and contextualizing things. You're meant to pretend Bret is giving the presentation in 1973; e.g. his comment about "but there's no way Intel will corner the market and stifle innovation, right?"