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> Think about how amazing it could be if your web browser could automatically re-design the low-level system instructions 10 stacks down to achieve a higher eff
by titzer 4y ago
> Think about how amazing it could be if your web browser could automatically re-design the low-level system instructions 10 stacks down to achieve a higher efficiency in loading web pages.
This sounds great in theory, but in practice, a system that has that much dynamic adaptation has brutally steep performance cliffs and is massively complex. I for one, will be opting out of that giant vertical slice of hell. This is one of the _good_ reasons for having layers: separate failure zones, separate levels of abstraction--true reuse and modularity. Bugs break all that.
And no, given the hallucinations of large models just in the natural language space, I do not want to reason through the mad ravings of a tripping AI to debug a monster pile that happens to make web property X go 10% faster.
- samstave 4y agoELI5 what "10 stacks down" means? I havent heard this phrase before.
- titzer 4y agoI assume that the author means "Framework XYZ in TypeScript running on JS running on V8, which is written in C++, compiled by clang, running on Linux with glibc N, running on VMWare, running on x86, running on the Rapture Cove microarchitecture." I don't know if there are 10 I could name, but stacks are deep.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- diydsp 4y agoYup, that graphics stacks could easily add a few layers for ya! When I was at a gfx card mfr, there were many compatibility and shim layers :)
- swyx 4y agoi’d honestly love a full accounting of those stacks from browser all the way down to transistor. almost feel like we need to record it for posterity in case anything happens to our civilization
- sva_ 4y agoOSI alone would give you 7 stacks
- samstave 4y agoTrue, but when learning OSI in 90s - they were always refered to as 'layers' of the same protocol. Stacks where completely stand-alone applications connected which were not layers of the same protocol/system. I think that the simple way is to refer to them as stacks now, but if you were raised on LAYERS - refering to OSI as 'stacks' feels foreign. It appearsthat as we atomoze / containerize various teck, we now thing of them as 'stacks' rather than layers. It seems that 'layers' are now 'services' rather.
- swyx 4y agoarent many of the OSI layers effectively collapsed? eg TCP/IP has like 90% market share compared to alternatives and effectively function as a single layer. im not sure about the DNS layer but i think theres a case to be made there too
- Ruq 4y agoRelated: The OSI Networking Model defines 7 layers (or stacks) to clearly define and separate the duties of each level of the networking. Having clear levels makes troubleshooting and debugging layers. In practice there's only 4 or 5 layers depending on who you ask.
- samstave 4y agoThanks - I have always mentally separated 'stacks' from 'layers', specifically in networking. I imagined stacks as tech1+tech2+techN I just hadnt heard that phrase before... 30 years deep in ops.
- b0afc375b5 4y agoWhen I read anything about the OSI model it always reminds me of this article https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26607983 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26607983 > I have said before that I believe that teaching modern students the OSI model as an approach to networking is a fundamental mistake that makes the concepts less clear rather than more. The major reason for this is simple: the OSI model was prescriptive of a specific network stack designed alongside it, and that network stack is not the one we use today. In fact, the TCP/IP stack we use today was intentionally designed differently from the OSI model for practical reasons.