3 ms·

> so I'm not sure why we're judging it on a criteria they don't care about. It's not judging, but wondering and regretting that architecture independence was n

by Rochus 3y ago

> so I'm not sure why we're judging it on a criteria they don't care about. It's not judging, but wondering and regretting that architecture independence was not a requirement. Personally, I have started in the late nineties to free my projects from the dependencies (or rather "shackles") of specific platforms and vendors. This has more than paid off. Otherwise, a large part of my many years of work would have been lost.

philistine 3y ago
You're absolutely right to do it. There's one platform that's for all intents and purposes not portable (Windows) that has been extremely successful, but outside of that no one has survived by being wedded to only one architecture. I guess its a lesson for all those companies on ARM: always have a plan B.
- Rochus 3y ago
  Well, at least there are many independent chip providers, and that they use the same ARM architecture (i.e. detail design specifications, etc.) even has the advantage that tools and know-how are re-useable by the companies using these chips (and that each of these chip providers has the ARM detail design at hand is even an advantage compared to RISC-V, where "only" the ABI is open source); in contrast MS is indeed a single provider keeping the source code of most of its products closed (which virtually makes it a potential "single point of failure" for a large market).
- anticensor 3y ago
  Both Windows NT kernel API and Windows userspace API are designed to be portable across processor architectures, minus a few non-essential assumptions that are sadly assumed to be invariants by some userspace applications.
broken-kebab 3y ago
There are different philosophies regarding software development. The project as it seems follows Chuck Moore's idea which says one must re-write more often (vs abstract away, patch over, extend above etc.), and be more focused on particular usages (vs betting on hypothetical future cases) to keep software unbloated, quick, and truly navigable by developers. Apparently, this approach is far from being popular (majority of devs probably doesn't even know such thing exists) because programmer's time has been very expensive for decades. So code quality, speed, and especially size became much lesser concern compared to time spent. But people do practice it as an art form in non-commercial projects, and to enhance their skills in optimization. Writing a whole OS with GUI, and apps in FASM apparently is one of such exercises.
- Rochus 3y ago
  You can (and in some cases should) also rewrite and simplify code written in a plattform independent high-level language. And even Forth has re-usable parts not written in assembler (though re-use and generality aren't Chuck's thing).

by Rochus 3y ago

philistine 3y ago

You're absolutely right to do it. There's one platform that's for all intents and purposes not portable (Windows) that has been extremely successful, but outside of that no one has survived by being wedded to only one architecture. I guess its a lesson for all those companies on ARM: always have a plan B.

Rochus 3y ago
Well, at least there are many independent chip providers, and that they use the same ARM architecture (i.e. detail design specifications, etc.) even has the advantage that tools and know-how are re-useable by the companies using these chips (and that each of these chip providers has the ARM detail design at hand is even an advantage compared to RISC-V, where "only" the ABI is open source); in contrast MS is indeed a single provider keeping the source code of most of its products closed (which virtually makes it a potential "single point of failure" for a large market).
anticensor 3y ago
Both Windows NT kernel API and Windows userspace API are designed to be portable across processor architectures, minus a few non-essential assumptions that are sadly assumed to be invariants by some userspace applications.

broken-kebab 3y ago

There are different philosophies regarding software development. The project as it seems follows Chuck Moore's idea which says one must re-write more often (vs abstract away, patch over, extend above etc.), and be more focused on particular usages (vs betting on hypothetical future cases) to keep software unbloated, quick, and truly navigable by developers. Apparently, this approach is far from being popular (majority of devs probably doesn't even know such thing exists) because programmer's time has been very expensive for decades. So code quality, speed, and especially size became much lesser concern compared to time spent. But people do practice it as an art form in non-commercial projects, and to enhance their skills in optimization. Writing a whole OS with GUI, and apps in FASM apparently is one of such exercises.

Rochus 3y ago
You can (and in some cases should) also rewrite and simplify code written in a plattform independent high-level language. And even Forth has re-usable parts not written in assembler (though re-use and generality aren't Chuck's thing).