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The problem with systems design is that it's all so complex. Multitasking has become an excuse to run everything as some absurd daemon. Badly designed hardware
by javascriptlol 15y ago
The problem with systems design is that it's all so complex. Multitasking has become an excuse to run everything as some absurd daemon. Badly designed hardware has to be papered over with undocumented binary drivers. Everything is optimised for throughput benchmarks, so we get warm ups and unpredictable pauses visible to the user. And it's all full of security holes.
The plain truth of the matter is that none of these things are due to a lack of special language support. It's that the whole system is too complex, and the complexity isn't even quarantined in such a way as to be harmless. We need to be able to start over (something the author acknowledges). We can't do this if we build yet another complex system in the belief that we'll get it all right this time round.
- eli_gottlieb 15y agoBut that would break the backwards compatibility with previous systems and architectures. The markets can't have that.
- ehsanu1 15y agoThe problem with that is "Worse is Better". And there's just so much momentum behind current technologies, that switching seems almost unimaginable to most. Can you imagine not having Unix-like systems, and not being able to use C and all the languages built around that ecosystem? But if you're looking for a replacement for the entire software stack we use today, one that tries to shun complexity (20k LOC for everything from kernel to common GUI apps), here you go: http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2011004_steps11.pdf http://www.vpri.org/pdf/tr2011004_steps11.pdf More info (see previous STEPS reports): http://vpri.org/html/writings.php http://vpri.org/html/writings.php
- javascriptlol 15y agoThanks for the link. I will check this out later. >Can you imagine not having Unix-like systems, and not being able to use C and all the languages built around that ecosystem? Yes! Charles Moore has been essentially living this since the 1970's. No many have his level of courage though.
- psykotic 15y ago> Yes! Charles Moore has been essentially living this since the 1970's. No many have his level of courage though. I'm an unbounded admirer of Charles Moore. But courageous? He's a software solipsist. His approach is certainly bold but I doubt he sees himself as courageous.
- javascriptlol 15y agoCall it bold or courageous. He's doing something few are willing to do. I'm not saying he's a hero in the same sense as a soldier or anything here, but he's worth 100x more than the drones who just keep piling mess upon mess without even being able to admit what they are doing.
- andrewflnr 15y agoYou mean this one? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_H._Moore http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_H._Moore Can you give some more detail? What does he use?
- stonemetal 15y agoTowards the bottom of that page it mentions color forth. That is what he uses. It is a forth like language that removed punctuation and replaces it with colors.
- andrewflnr 15y agoAh, upon further reading, colorForth has its own operating system, so he probably uses that too. I had seen the forth bits, but the GP implied he was using some non-Unix OS, and I was still curious about that.
- RodgerTheGreat 15y agoForth is conventionally a compiler, REPL, editor and OS all in one package. If I recall correctly, the reference implementation of ColorForth happens to run as a Windows application, but it pretty much lives in its own memory image and could probably be made bootable.