4 ms·

Linus wrote the first draft of the Linux kernel as a college student in late 1991. 19-NINETY-1 Linux is 100% a product of the 90s and after, and is one of the

by ttfkam 3y ago

Linus wrote the first draft of the Linux kernel as a college student in late 1991. 19-NINETY-1 Linux is 100% a product of the 90s and after, and is one of the biggest software quality success stories of all time. It has only improved since then. Initial public release of PostgreSQL, the best open source database around today, was 1996. It has only improved since then. The C spec was improved from C89 to C99. Implementations appeared for C89 in the 1990s, and both were notable improvements over original K&R. First release of Python in 1991. Improving steadily since then. The web browser is arguably the single most impressive app of all. Graphical layout and executable from network-loaded resources. It is THE killer app of the internet. As far as the average person in the world is concerned, if browsers disappeared, the world would stop. The security scrutiny browsers have received have exceeded ANY other pieces of software that have ever existed, and multiple browsers have been independently created. Blender: 1994. Improving since then. Games have never been more technically sophisticated, visually impressive, environmentally immersive, and narratively deep as they are today. I do have a soft spot for Star Control II, but again that was released in 1992. This isn't cynicism. This is an honest appraisal of my lived history of computing.

mjburgess 3y ago
Again, I don't think you're making contact with jblow's point, nor the context of my reply. Nothing in what you've said he'd disagree with. His claim isnt the obviously absurd idea that no good software is written today, or over the last 30 years. Such a position is trivial to refute. His issue is the complexity of operating systems today, with too much emphasis on bad developer tooling (eg., GC+OO over just providing better memory handling tools), coupled with the internet as a means of app distribution, and in the influx of "below-jnr" level engineers has created a perfect storm of terrible software. Something disguised by radical advances in hardware. When a modal popup in vscode steals my cursor focus when i'm in the middle of deleting a file (etc.) it's hard to disagree. Everything is 10-100x more complex than it needs to be, and most developers are stacking plates higher and higher (eg., electron) on a terrible foundation. This isnt a point that can be engaged with based on a superficial analysis or just a reductio ad absurd ("here are counter examples..."). How many developers write postgres, and how many write vscode? How much has been spent on the latter vs. the former? (and so on). I giving Linus as an example of the earlier programming culture, jblow himself is alive today after all. The claim isnt that nothing of this culture survives -- it's that its power and influence has collapsed. It started to collapse when hardware stopped disciplining programmers in the mid 90s.
- ttfkam 3y ago
  Gatekeeping. The barriers to entry have dropped to the point of disappearing. It's why the industry is so vibrant. "The odds are good, but the goods are odd." The core group of CS & CE graduates are as good or better than their forebears. That hasn't changed. What has changed are the number of folks without CS & CE degrees entering the field. You cite VS Code modals yet scoot over a huge truth: without Electron, Microsoft would never have invested as much into an IDE with consistent UI and feature set across Windows, MacOS, Linux, and more including both amd64 and ARM architectures. You complain about an annoying modal without recognizing that without Electron, you wouldn't have the app! Or it at best would be Windows-only. Or perhaps a limited-features version for MacOS like their Office suite is. Then of course there's the realization you can embed VS Code in a browser with essentially feature parity with a desktop install. Electron paved the way for VS Code to be installed and run on a Chromebook. A Chromebook! Do you get how amazing that all is? How the VS Code marketplace is filled to the brim with tools for every programming language and subsystem you want or need? Many are crap and many are solid gold. There are undisciplined developers, sure. There are undisciplined plumbers, roofers, auto mechanics, electricians, medical doctors, CPAs, school teachers, and on and on. I've met CS PhDs that couldn't code their way out of a paper bag outside of academia. I've met folks who haven't graduated high school do incredible feats of software engineering. And all points in between (which is where I have been in my career). It's not collapsing. It's becoming normalized in our society. This is what that looks like.
  - mjburgess 3y ago
    You're explaining the decline, not arguing against it. That MS chose to invest vast amounts of time and money in typescript & vscode shows they could easily have done so on a fast native cross platform technology instead. The network effects that the interent has created, around terrible technologies, explains the tactical choices made by each actor here to worsen the quality of software dramatically. The issue is the net strategic loss in what choices were not made. Cross-platform games cost less than the investment made into VS Code -- and consider what valve has done for the steam deck. Let's be clear: highly performant, reliable, cross platform, native feature-ful software was always an option; and often a relatively easy one to exercise. The modern software culture made deliberate tactical decisions not to pursue that path. The idea that we should be amazed an IDE runs on a chromebook is frankly obscene. We should be outraged that we live in a world where laptops can run x86 CPUs and not run arbitary x86 software. We should be outraged that there was ever a world in which a generic piece of hardware would arbitarily constrain generic software. All this apologia of yours i think really exposes how far our expectations have fallen, and does nothing but show Mr. Blow to be on the money

by ttfkam 3y ago

mjburgess 3y ago

Again, I don't think you're making contact with jblow's point, nor the context of my reply. Nothing in what you've said he'd disagree with. His claim isnt the obviously absurd idea that no good software is written today, or over the last 30 years. Such a position is trivial to refute. His issue is the complexity of operating systems today, with too much emphasis on bad developer tooling (eg., GC+OO over just providing better memory handling tools), coupled with the internet as a means of app distribution, and in the influx of "below-jnr" level engineers has created a perfect storm of terrible software. Something disguised by radical advances in hardware. When a modal popup in vscode steals my cursor focus when i'm in the middle of deleting a file (etc.) it's hard to disagree. Everything is 10-100x more complex than it needs to be, and most developers are stacking plates higher and higher (eg., electron) on a terrible foundation. This isnt a point that can be engaged with based on a superficial analysis or just a reductio ad absurd ("here are counter examples..."). How many developers write postgres, and how many write vscode? How much has been spent on the latter vs. the former? (and so on). I giving Linus as an example of the earlier programming culture, jblow himself is alive today after all. The claim isnt that nothing of this culture survives -- it's that its power and influence has collapsed. It started to collapse when hardware stopped disciplining programmers in the mid 90s.

ttfkam 3y ago
Gatekeeping. The barriers to entry have dropped to the point of disappearing. It's why the industry is so vibrant. "The odds are good, but the goods are odd." The core group of CS & CE graduates are as good or better than their forebears. That hasn't changed. What has changed are the number of folks without CS & CE degrees entering the field. You cite VS Code modals yet scoot over a huge truth: without Electron, Microsoft would never have invested as much into an IDE with consistent UI and feature set across Windows, MacOS, Linux, and more including both amd64 and ARM architectures. You complain about an annoying modal without recognizing that without Electron, you wouldn't have the app! Or it at best would be Windows-only. Or perhaps a limited-features version for MacOS like their Office suite is. Then of course there's the realization you can embed VS Code in a browser with essentially feature parity with a desktop install. Electron paved the way for VS Code to be installed and run on a Chromebook. A Chromebook! Do you get how amazing that all is? How the VS Code marketplace is filled to the brim with tools for every programming language and subsystem you want or need? Many are crap and many are solid gold. There are undisciplined developers, sure. There are undisciplined plumbers, roofers, auto mechanics, electricians, medical doctors, CPAs, school teachers, and on and on. I've met CS PhDs that couldn't code their way out of a paper bag outside of academia. I've met folks who haven't graduated high school do incredible feats of software engineering. And all points in between (which is where I have been in my career). It's not collapsing. It's becoming normalized in our society. This is what that looks like.
- mjburgess 3y ago
  You're explaining the decline, not arguing against it. That MS chose to invest vast amounts of time and money in typescript & vscode shows they could easily have done so on a fast native cross platform technology instead. The network effects that the interent has created, around terrible technologies, explains the tactical choices made by each actor here to worsen the quality of software dramatically. The issue is the net strategic loss in what choices were not made. Cross-platform games cost less than the investment made into VS Code -- and consider what valve has done for the steam deck. Let's be clear: highly performant, reliable, cross platform, native feature-ful software was always an option; and often a relatively easy one to exercise. The modern software culture made deliberate tactical decisions not to pursue that path. The idea that we should be amazed an IDE runs on a chromebook is frankly obscene. We should be outraged that we live in a world where laptops can run x86 CPUs and not run arbitary x86 software. We should be outraged that there was ever a world in which a generic piece of hardware would arbitarily constrain generic software. All this apologia of yours i think really exposes how far our expectations have fallen, and does nothing but show Mr. Blow to be on the money