3 ms·

We are stuck in the 70s because Unix is free. Those mainframes and such were more advanced but they were expensive. The LISP machines and the connection machine

by api 4y ago

We are stuck in the 70s because Unix is free. Those mainframes and such were more advanced but they were expensive. The LISP machines and the connection machines were expensive. Free doesn’t just succeed because people don’t want to pay. It succeeds because you can just copy it with zero friction. It’s viral.

still_grokking 4y ago
True, true. The marked chooses the cheapest product that can somehow satisfy the current needs. Nothing beats "free & good enough". But it blocks now any meaningful progress. That's a pity.
fsckboy 4y ago
Just want to register my disagreement. IMHO unix won purely on technical merit (including simplicity and flexibility), and I'm here because I loved it even before it won. Now that it won, we hear a lot of discontent, but it's just the people who don't like it don't have an alternative because their preferred systems have failed, nothing about unix.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  The wonderful technical achievement of free beer, over expensive wine.
  - still_grokking 4y ago
    Well said. Problem is likely that people just don't know anything else by now. If all you've seen is Windows and a Unix clone, well, you could indeed come up with the idea that Unix is "well designed". Even it's actually not designed at all, and more or less everything was just a random accident (and usually even the worst, but "simplest", option around).
- still_grokking 4y ago
  I see Unix (or today Linux) as currently without any alternative. And it's an OK-ish OS by now. I'm using it for over 20 years as the only thing that's allowed to touch hardware. Still I don't think that it has "won" because it's amazing on the tech level. It really isn't! It's a big hack. With ridiculously stupid / primitive ideas behind it. (Just to name one of my favorite elephants in the room: A stream of "chars"—whatever a "char" is—is a "data format"? Even a "universal" one? Alone saying such things out loud is absurdly foolish, imho). But by now legends have formed around the whole story. Most of the "Unix philosophy" for example is a post-hoc invention by people who have some strong urge to "look smart" in retrospective… The truth is Unix started as a toy without any serous planing behind it. But than business discovered it by chance, and business came to to the conclusion that "a Bobbycar is good enough" as long as it doesn't cost anything. Business is never interested in excellent technical solutions! It's always only interested in "the cheapest shit that gets the job done"™ (barely). Unix fits this pattern very well. A small reminder where we're still standing mostly: https://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf https://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf

by api 4y ago

still_grokking 4y ago

True, true. The marked chooses the cheapest product that can somehow satisfy the current needs. Nothing beats "free & good enough". But it blocks now any meaningful progress. That's a pity.

fsckboy 4y ago

Just want to register my disagreement. IMHO unix won purely on technical merit (including simplicity and flexibility), and I'm here because I loved it even before it won. Now that it won, we hear a lot of discontent, but it's just the people who don't like it don't have an alternative because their preferred systems have failed, nothing about unix.

pjmlp 4y ago
The wonderful technical achievement of free beer, over expensive wine.
- still_grokking 4y ago
  Well said. Problem is likely that people just don't know anything else by now. If all you've seen is Windows and a Unix clone, well, you could indeed come up with the idea that Unix is "well designed". Even it's actually not designed at all, and more or less everything was just a random accident (and usually even the worst, but "simplest", option around).
still_grokking 4y ago
I see Unix (or today Linux) as currently without any alternative. And it's an OK-ish OS by now. I'm using it for over 20 years as the only thing that's allowed to touch hardware. Still I don't think that it has "won" because it's amazing on the tech level. It really isn't! It's a big hack. With ridiculously stupid / primitive ideas behind it. (Just to name one of my favorite elephants in the room: A stream of "chars"—whatever a "char" is—is a "data format"? Even a "universal" one? Alone saying such things out loud is absurdly foolish, imho). But by now legends have formed around the whole story. Most of the "Unix philosophy" for example is a post-hoc invention by people who have some strong urge to "look smart" in retrospective… The truth is Unix started as a toy without any serous planing behind it. But than business discovered it by chance, and business came to to the conclusion that "a Bobbycar is good enough" as long as it doesn't cost anything. Business is never interested in excellent technical solutions! It's always only interested in "the cheapest shit that gets the job done"™ (barely). Unix fits this pattern very well. A small reminder where we're still standing mostly: https://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf https://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf