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Kay's assertion seems incredible -- he really has to prove it. What assertion, exactly? That the personal computing stack can be implemented in 20K LOC? They'v

by gruseom 15y ago

Kay's assertion seems incredible -- he really has to prove it. What assertion, exactly? That the personal computing stack can be implemented in 20K LOC? They've already achieved the bulk of it, so that claim no longer qualifies as incredible. Pooh-poohing this staggering achievement because they didn't reinvent personal computing while they were at it really takes the cake for moving the bar. If someone had gotten all the world's recorded music on a thumb drive in 1970, would you have complained that they didn't write the music themselves?

randallsquared 15y ago
What assertion, exactly? That the personal computing stack can be implemented in 20K LOC? No, the assertion from the article that "99% or even 99.9% of the effort that goes into creating a large software system is not productive." While it's very interesting and frankly astonishing that they've been able to reimplement things that are fairly well understood in 100x less code, this is not at all the same as proving the assertion that these things could have been originally done in 100x less code. I hope that it's true that they could have been -- it's exciting to think that it might be true -- but it doesn't seem to be a claim that STEPS proves, or tries to, from the explicit goal of reusing concepts and designs from other OSes.
- loup-vaillant 15y ago
  To build that personal computing environment, they had to solve various problems, including compilation, drawings, text editing, and networking. To me, the set is sufficiently diverse to make full generalization probable. It may take a genius to apply this to other domains, but I'm confident it can be done. Once it is, your average programmer can begin to be 10 times more productive, or more.
- gruseom 15y ago
  First, Kay didn't write the article. Second, sorry, but I'm not buying this response at all. These guys have done something that all conventional thinking about software complexity would say was impossible. They've refuted something fundamental about universal practice. Seems to me the only open-minded response is to be flabbergasted and ask what else we need to question. To say (I'm exaggerating how it sounds) "Oh, well, sure, they did that impossible, but this other impossible over here, that's the one that really matters" just seems like rationalization to me. Oh and also, it's at least three orders of magnitude, not two.
  - randallsquared 15y ago
    The supposition was attributed to Kay: "Alan Kay speculates in this talk that 99% or even 99.9% of the effort that goes into creating a large software system is not productive." This is the claim. Without in any way diminishing the astonishing accomplishments of the STEPS team, let's remember that they've spent (are spending) five years to write 20K lines of code. This doesn't sound like the level of effort is 1000 (or 100, or possibly even 10) times less for what they've accomplished than it would have been had they implemented exactly the same functionality in, say, Java. Would the Java code have been 1000 times bigger? It seems quite likely that it would have! But the bulkiness of the end product's source code doesn't determine the amount of effort that went into building it. Could it be that they spent four and a half years figuring this new system out, and a few weeks writing the 20K lines of source? It could; I haven't read most of their papers. If that was the case, then that's what needs to be pointed out to refute the assumption that they're spending as much or almost as much effort on the end product (but with astonishingly little source code required to specify it).
    - gruseom 15y ago
      You do have a good point that one should consider not just the code size but the effort to get there (though let's not forget the effort to maintain and extend it over time). But are you sure you're framing it correctly? It seems unfair to compare the effort it takes to pioneer a fundamentally new approach to the effort it takes to implement a common one. That's like comparing the guys who have to cut a tunnel through mountain rock to the ones who get to drive through it later. We have no idea how easy it might get to build new systems their way once the relevant techniques were absorbed by industry. The founding project is no basis for predicting that, other than that historically these things get far easier as the consequences are worked out over time. What we do know from general research (at least, I've read this many times - anyone know the source?) is that programmer effort tends to be about the same per line of code. That's one reason everyone always cites for higher-level languages being better. Maybe that result doesn't hold up here, but it seems like a reasonable baseline.

by gruseom 15y ago

randallsquared 15y ago

What assertion, exactly? That the personal computing stack can be implemented in 20K LOC? No, the assertion from the article that "99% or even 99.9% of the effort that goes into creating a large software system is not productive." While it's very interesting and frankly astonishing that they've been able to reimplement things that are fairly well understood in 100x less code, this is not at all the same as proving the assertion that these things could have been originally done in 100x less code. I hope that it's true that they could have been -- it's exciting to think that it might be true -- but it doesn't seem to be a claim that STEPS proves, or tries to, from the explicit goal of reusing concepts and designs from other OSes.

loup-vaillant 15y ago
To build that personal computing environment, they had to solve various problems, including compilation, drawings, text editing, and networking. To me, the set is sufficiently diverse to make full generalization probable. It may take a genius to apply this to other domains, but I'm confident it can be done. Once it is, your average programmer can begin to be 10 times more productive, or more.
gruseom 15y ago
First, Kay didn't write the article. Second, sorry, but I'm not buying this response at all. These guys have done something that all conventional thinking about software complexity would say was impossible. They've refuted something fundamental about universal practice. Seems to me the only open-minded response is to be flabbergasted and ask what else we need to question. To say (I'm exaggerating how it sounds) "Oh, well, sure, they did that impossible, but this other impossible over here, that's the one that really matters" just seems like rationalization to me. Oh and also, it's at least three orders of magnitude, not two.
- randallsquared 15y ago
  The supposition was attributed to Kay: "Alan Kay speculates in this talk that 99% or even 99.9% of the effort that goes into creating a large software system is not productive." This is the claim. Without in any way diminishing the astonishing accomplishments of the STEPS team, let's remember that they've spent (are spending) five years to write 20K lines of code. This doesn't sound like the level of effort is 1000 (or 100, or possibly even 10) times less for what they've accomplished than it would have been had they implemented exactly the same functionality in, say, Java. Would the Java code have been 1000 times bigger? It seems quite likely that it would have! But the bulkiness of the end product's source code doesn't determine the amount of effort that went into building it. Could it be that they spent four and a half years figuring this new system out, and a few weeks writing the 20K lines of source? It could; I haven't read most of their papers. If that was the case, then that's what needs to be pointed out to refute the assumption that they're spending as much or almost as much effort on the end product (but with astonishingly little source code required to specify it).
  - gruseom 15y ago
    You do have a good point that one should consider not just the code size but the effort to get there (though let's not forget the effort to maintain and extend it over time). But are you sure you're framing it correctly? It seems unfair to compare the effort it takes to pioneer a fundamentally new approach to the effort it takes to implement a common one. That's like comparing the guys who have to cut a tunnel through mountain rock to the ones who get to drive through it later. We have no idea how easy it might get to build new systems their way once the relevant techniques were absorbed by industry. The founding project is no basis for predicting that, other than that historically these things get far easier as the consequences are worked out over time. What we do know from general research (at least, I've read this many times - anyone know the source?) is that programmer effort tends to be about the same per line of code. That's one reason everyone always cites for higher-level languages being better. Maybe that result doesn't hold up here, but it seems like a reasonable baseline.