6 ms·

XNU, or more specifically the Mach part of it, also had some very questionable design choices that likely compounds the issue as it forces people to work around

XNU, or more specifically the Mach part of it, also had some very questionable design choices that likely compounds the issue as it forces people to work around it in increasingly awkward ways. As Mach was conceived and mostly designed by an academic with no real world industry experience in shipping kernels.

senko 2y ago
> As Mach was conceived and mostly designed by an academic with no real world industry experience in shipping kernels. You may be thinking of Andrew S. Tanenbaum, who created MINIX, and was famously blasted by Linus for not having industry experience. Mach was written by guys who ended leading Microsoft Reaearch and software development at Apple.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- ziddoap 2y ago
  >was famously blasted by Linus for not having industry experience. I answered my own question (where to read more about this), and found the relevant information from https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/opensources/book/appa.html https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/opensources/book/appa.html
  - beachy 2y ago
    This is a fantastic read, thanks for linking it. Linus's pragmatic approach really comes to the fore.
  - jchw 2y ago
    > To put this discussion into perspective, when it occurred in 1992, [...] many companies that are household names today--Netscape, Yahoo, Excite--simply did not exist. That sure has aged interestingly since 1999.
- wrs 2y ago
  They did that later, but it is accurate to say that when Mach was first designed, Rick Rashid and others lacked "industry experience". However, they had a lot of practical experience making real systems for academic purposes. The CS departments at U of Rochester and CMU are serious about building stuff.
saagarjha 2y ago
None of this has to do with the Mach part of XNU. There are genuine bugs there (everyone hates the memory code for example) but again that is completely irrelevant here.
- MichaelZuo 2y ago
  How do you know Mach wasn’t the cause of some workaround in the 90s, and that 5 workarounds in a row later it becomes harder to resolve this issue in 2024?
  - saagarjha 2y ago
    Because I read the blog post.
    - MichaelZuo 2y ago
      So can you actually write the argument here? That supposedly proves it’s impossible for A to have affected B… even with 6 degrees of seperation…
      - saagarjha 2y ago
        No, I won't. Your request is unreasonable. You posted a claim that is not true. This bug has nothing to do with the Mach layer of XNU, and the blog post has enough detail to explain why. When I call you out on that, you don't get to retreat to an absurd position and ask me to substantiate it: there's probably six degrees of separation between what I ate for breakfast and these bugs shipping. This is something that is basically impossible to falsify, but also deeply uninteresting. So I am not going to entertain it for you.
        MichaelZuo 2y ago
        Your opinions can’t ever outweigh my opinions, or any other HN user’s opinions for that matter, so this adds nothing to the conversation.

senko 2y ago

> As Mach was conceived and mostly designed by an academic with no real world industry experience in shipping kernels. You may be thinking of Andrew S. Tanenbaum, who created MINIX, and was famously blasted by Linus for not having industry experience. Mach was written by guys who ended leading Microsoft Reaearch and software development at Apple.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ziddoap 2y ago
>was famously blasted by Linus for not having industry experience. I answered my own question (where to read more about this), and found the relevant information from https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/opensources/book/appa.html https://www.oreilly.com/openbook/opensources/book/appa.html
- beachy 2y ago
  This is a fantastic read, thanks for linking it. Linus's pragmatic approach really comes to the fore.
- jchw 2y ago
  > To put this discussion into perspective, when it occurred in 1992, [...] many companies that are household names today--Netscape, Yahoo, Excite--simply did not exist. That sure has aged interestingly since 1999.
wrs 2y ago
They did that later, but it is accurate to say that when Mach was first designed, Rick Rashid and others lacked "industry experience". However, they had a lot of practical experience making real systems for academic purposes. The CS departments at U of Rochester and CMU are serious about building stuff.

saagarjha 2y ago

None of this has to do with the Mach part of XNU. There are genuine bugs there (everyone hates the memory code for example) but again that is completely irrelevant here.

MichaelZuo 2y ago
How do you know Mach wasn’t the cause of some workaround in the 90s, and that 5 workarounds in a row later it becomes harder to resolve this issue in 2024?
- saagarjha 2y ago
  Because I read the blog post.
  - MichaelZuo 2y ago
    So can you actually write the argument here? That supposedly proves it’s impossible for A to have affected B… even with 6 degrees of seperation…
    - saagarjha 2y ago
      No, I won't. Your request is unreasonable. You posted a claim that is not true. This bug has nothing to do with the Mach layer of XNU, and the blog post has enough detail to explain why. When I call you out on that, you don't get to retreat to an absurd position and ask me to substantiate it: there's probably six degrees of separation between what I ate for breakfast and these bugs shipping. This is something that is basically impossible to falsify, but also deeply uninteresting. So I am not going to entertain it for you.
      - MichaelZuo 2y ago
        Your opinions can’t ever outweigh my opinions, or any other HN user’s opinions for that matter, so this adds nothing to the conversation.