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The most immediately obvious answer to that question, shared by Stephenson himself, is that the essay quickly failed the test of time because it did not anticip
by ameliaquining 2y ago
The most immediately obvious answer to that question, shared by Stephenson himself, is that the essay quickly failed the test of time because it did not anticipate Mac OS X, which breaks the dichotomy of user-friendly-but-anemic Classic Mac OS vs. powerful-but-forbidding Unix.
(I personally still don't really like Apple systems and don't use them, but I think it's clear that by the standards of the time OS X squared this circle.)
- troyvit 2y agoI was speaking to ESR's essay holding up to the test of time but you have a good point. I'd argue however that the lock-down Apple imposes on OS X, such as signed system volumes, keeps them firmly planted in a cathedral. That said I don't know why I'd argue with Neal Stephenson about this stuff to begin with so maybe I should stop typing :)
- ameliaquining 2y agoIIUC cathedral-style development of open source projects (i.e., intermediate development versions aren't publicly available, you can only get official releases) is now very rare; Android is the only project I can think of off the top of my head that works that way. So in that respect ESR's perspective clearly won out. Of course an essay of that length makes any number of claims and some will have aged better than others.
- interroboink 2y agoI think one could argue that FreeBSD is more cathedral-style than Linux, and there are other examples, especially for programming languages, where the inventor(s) want to avoid it being pulled in too many directions at once (extreme example: Jai). I don't know that it's really such a binary either/or decision, more of a spectrum of "more cathedral-y" and "more bazaar-y."