8 ms·

We have the research divisions of Google and Microsoft. The running joke about MSR is they do really great research (they do) but you would have no idea from th

We have the research divisions of Google and Microsoft. The running joke about MSR is they do really great research (they do) but you would have no idea from the products. What is missing is the Bob Taylor like visionary in the sense that he was sowing the seeds for something like golden age Parc. We have managed to create a system where the money has flowed to people with little idea of how to use it properly, which is not how capitalism is supposed to work. I am also reminded of Alan Kay once making a remark about people confusing Linux knowledge for computer science fundamentals. We may be suffering from a Linux monoculture.

PaulHoule 3y ago
I wasn't in CS as an undergrad but I hung out at the computer center where they were teaching it and talked a lot to students in the courses and people who were teaching them. Before Linux projects for the "operating systems" class were pretty limited, if you were lucky you wrote a bootloader that worked. Once Linux came around it was night and day better as you could do just about any project that involves writing or modifying a kernel module. So at one level Linux enabled a lot of learning and innovation in relatively small and marginal ways, but someone could say it killed off major innovations in operating systems. On the other hand, I think the userspace is just as bad as the kernel in that respect if not worse. Suppose you believed that the ordinary kind of OS is "bloated" and wanted to try something new. Well, you need a userspace and unless you're going to write every single program you want to run on your OS fresh you're going to have to support a POSIX API and if you do that you've put all the bloat back in, even if it is a translation layer over some native API that will likely go unused because most of the software you'll want to run will be existing stuff. If there is any real alternative to that model it is the "OO API" model seem with COM in Windows and whatever kind of serialization Android uses which is just putting the bloat train into high gear.
selimthegrim 3y ago
Doesn’t this running joke apply to IBM too?

PaulHoule 3y ago

I wasn't in CS as an undergrad but I hung out at the computer center where they were teaching it and talked a lot to students in the courses and people who were teaching them. Before Linux projects for the "operating systems" class were pretty limited, if you were lucky you wrote a bootloader that worked. Once Linux came around it was night and day better as you could do just about any project that involves writing or modifying a kernel module. So at one level Linux enabled a lot of learning and innovation in relatively small and marginal ways, but someone could say it killed off major innovations in operating systems. On the other hand, I think the userspace is just as bad as the kernel in that respect if not worse. Suppose you believed that the ordinary kind of OS is "bloated" and wanted to try something new. Well, you need a userspace and unless you're going to write every single program you want to run on your OS fresh you're going to have to support a POSIX API and if you do that you've put all the bloat back in, even if it is a translation layer over some native API that will likely go unused because most of the software you'll want to run will be existing stuff. If there is any real alternative to that model it is the "OO API" model seem with COM in Windows and whatever kind of serialization Android uses which is just putting the bloat train into high gear.

selimthegrim 3y ago

Doesn’t this running joke apply to IBM too?