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Everything that was simple 20 years ago is now 100x more complicated. Part of the reasons made programming interesting for me long time ago was that fact that o

Everything that was simple 20 years ago is now 100x more complicated. Part of the reasons made programming interesting for me long time ago was that fact that one person could tackle a rather complex job all by himself. You could write a GUI, a game, a text processor, a compiler and even an OS as a one person team. Now you can't and some of the most complicate aspects of software engineering is how to interface your work with the work of others, how to understand what others have done, to have a high level global view of the whole software application and tools your company works on while having a very low level view of the part of the software you are working on.

TazeTSchnitzel 3y ago
> You could write a GUI, a game, a text processor, a compiler and even an OS as a one person team. You still can and many still do, but we expect a lot more from our tools in 2023 than we did in 1983.
vram22 3y ago
>You could write a GUI, a game, a text processor, a compiler and even an OS as a one person team. Yup. And I had read earlier that Niklaus Wirth created a computer and many of the layers above, with just a small team. (I guess there must be other such examples from the early days of computing.) Don't have the reference. May be related to his work on Lilith, Ceres, Oberon, etc. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niklaus_Wirth https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niklaus_Wirth Also see Wirth's Law: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law The derived / related laws mentioned there are also interesting.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  As Wirth's work fan, his creations were great for their time. I am old enough to have used Native Oberon back when it was still a novelty, and compare Modula-2 to Object Pascal compilers. Nowadays they feel out of place, both in OS capabilities, as well as the languages used to develop them.
  - vram22 3y ago
    Wow, cool.
holoduke 3y ago
You can still do that. You just dont look at all the fancy pancy overengineered frameworks/platforms. I run a solo business in which i need to do backend, frontend, db, networking, low level hardware, graphics, monetization and more. I cannot be a specialist, but its still doable to understand all elements of various layers in software/hardware development. Again. Dont look at the hype stuff. Usually the people who are good at the hype stuff are super specialists in that specific thing. Not my thing at least.
hutzlibu 3y ago
"some of the most complicate aspects of software engineering is how to interface your work with the work of others" And where exactly is the difference, when you write a OS, where you have to interface with the low level hardware and the choices of those engeneers? Apart from that, what is stopping you? Just pick a simple plattform and start. But yes, the result will be probably hard to sell, unless you find the right niche. Alternativly, you can join SerenetyOS, which started exactly as just a one man project and came quite far alone. And now they are getting momentum (100000$ donation to build a browser). https://serenityos.org/ https://serenityos.org/
pkphilip 3y ago
There are people still doing this. Example: Serenity OS https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity
BiteCode_dev 3y ago
You totally can, but it won't match users modern expectations.
ilyt 3y ago
Kinda why I like embedded development for my hobby. Can still understand all or most of the stack and tinker with it.
- spacemadness 3y ago
  That is why I went into it as a career, although I’ve pivoted away from it recently due to how the industry treats embedded engineers. Embedded let me relive the early days of programming where almost nothing is kept from you and understanding the system you are working with in a deep way is entirely possible without overstretching yourself. And of course it’s really satisfying to be able to work with a complex electronics schematic as part of your everyday development environment. The issue with it as a career are many unfortunately, such as being forced to used atrocious tooling at times (IAR, looking at you), less remote positions available, and the salary offers can be a joke compared to what you are expected to know. As a hobby though it’s very rewarding.
austin-cheney 3y ago
I completely disagree. I am writing an OS in TypeScript. The GUI portion was complete with 15 days. In JavaScript land people are scared shitless to write original software or learn the basic foundations of their common platforms. So yeah, that would make 10000000x more challenging. But that is a psychology and preparation problem, not a technology problem.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Interesting, what is the approach to kernel / managed language layers?
  - austin-cheney 3y ago
    The application does not touch the metal. It executes as an application doing the top half of what the lower operating system does. The reason for the redundant pseudo-OS is that it operates the same across multiple devices irrespective of the metal and lower level OS. That means it provides a seamless connected experience between Windows, Linux, and OSX (I still need to test certificate installation in OSX) with end-to-end encryption for things like file system, sub-processes, media processing, file execution, and so forth.
    - pjmlp 3y ago
      I see thanks, I was curious if was a kind of SELF like experience, with bare metal set of primitives, with possible JIT/GC infrastructure, and then the rest managed.
ramesh31 3y ago
>Everything that was simple 20 years ago is now 100x more complicated No, it's really not. Let's take just UI animations for example. I can create a fade-in transition with a custom timing function movement in 3 lines of CSS today. To do the same thing natively 20 years ago involved writing hundreds of lines of custom OpenGL code. I get that there's a lot of fatigue from framework churn, but the layers of abstraction are orders of magnitude higher today, to the point that most UI work has become an afterthought.

TazeTSchnitzel 3y ago

> You could write a GUI, a game, a text processor, a compiler and even an OS as a one person team. You still can and many still do, but we expect a lot more from our tools in 2023 than we did in 1983.

vram22 3y ago

>You could write a GUI, a game, a text processor, a compiler and even an OS as a one person team. Yup. And I had read earlier that Niklaus Wirth created a computer and many of the layers above, with just a small team. (I guess there must be other such examples from the early days of computing.) Don't have the reference. May be related to his work on Lilith, Ceres, Oberon, etc. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niklaus_Wirth https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niklaus_Wirth Also see Wirth's Law: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law The derived / related laws mentioned there are also interesting.

pjmlp 3y ago
As Wirth's work fan, his creations were great for their time. I am old enough to have used Native Oberon back when it was still a novelty, and compare Modula-2 to Object Pascal compilers. Nowadays they feel out of place, both in OS capabilities, as well as the languages used to develop them.
- vram22 3y ago
  Wow, cool.

holoduke 3y ago

You can still do that. You just dont look at all the fancy pancy overengineered frameworks/platforms. I run a solo business in which i need to do backend, frontend, db, networking, low level hardware, graphics, monetization and more. I cannot be a specialist, but its still doable to understand all elements of various layers in software/hardware development. Again. Dont look at the hype stuff. Usually the people who are good at the hype stuff are super specialists in that specific thing. Not my thing at least.

hutzlibu 3y ago

"some of the most complicate aspects of software engineering is how to interface your work with the work of others" And where exactly is the difference, when you write a OS, where you have to interface with the low level hardware and the choices of those engeneers? Apart from that, what is stopping you? Just pick a simple plattform and start. But yes, the result will be probably hard to sell, unless you find the right niche. Alternativly, you can join SerenetyOS, which started exactly as just a one man project and came quite far alone. And now they are getting momentum (100000$ donation to build a browser). https://serenityos.org/ https://serenityos.org/

pkphilip 3y ago

There are people still doing this. Example: Serenity OS https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity

BiteCode_dev 3y ago

You totally can, but it won't match users modern expectations.

ilyt 3y ago

Kinda why I like embedded development for my hobby. Can still understand all or most of the stack and tinker with it.

spacemadness 3y ago
That is why I went into it as a career, although I’ve pivoted away from it recently due to how the industry treats embedded engineers. Embedded let me relive the early days of programming where almost nothing is kept from you and understanding the system you are working with in a deep way is entirely possible without overstretching yourself. And of course it’s really satisfying to be able to work with a complex electronics schematic as part of your everyday development environment. The issue with it as a career are many unfortunately, such as being forced to used atrocious tooling at times (IAR, looking at you), less remote positions available, and the salary offers can be a joke compared to what you are expected to know. As a hobby though it’s very rewarding.

austin-cheney 3y ago

I completely disagree. I am writing an OS in TypeScript. The GUI portion was complete with 15 days. In JavaScript land people are scared shitless to write original software or learn the basic foundations of their common platforms. So yeah, that would make 10000000x more challenging. But that is a psychology and preparation problem, not a technology problem.

pjmlp 3y ago
Interesting, what is the approach to kernel / managed language layers?
- austin-cheney 3y ago
  The application does not touch the metal. It executes as an application doing the top half of what the lower operating system does. The reason for the redundant pseudo-OS is that it operates the same across multiple devices irrespective of the metal and lower level OS. That means it provides a seamless connected experience between Windows, Linux, and OSX (I still need to test certificate installation in OSX) with end-to-end encryption for things like file system, sub-processes, media processing, file execution, and so forth.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    I see thanks, I was curious if was a kind of SELF like experience, with bare metal set of primitives, with possible JIT/GC infrastructure, and then the rest managed.

ramesh31 3y ago

>Everything that was simple 20 years ago is now 100x more complicated No, it's really not. Let's take just UI animations for example. I can create a fade-in transition with a custom timing function movement in 3 lines of CSS today. To do the same thing natively 20 years ago involved writing hundreds of lines of custom OpenGL code. I get that there's a lot of fatigue from framework churn, but the layers of abstraction are orders of magnitude higher today, to the point that most UI work has become an afterthought.