8 ms·

In the Beginning was the Command Line (1999)

188 points by wseqyrku 10mo ago

deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
PotatoPancakes 10mo ago
Is this the origin of the classic analogy that Windows is a station wagon, Mac OS is a European luxury sedan, and Linux is a free tank? I had no idea that the author Neal Stephenson came up with that. The analogy is definitely a bit outdated now, what with Windows 8 then 10 then 11 getting aggressively less user-friendly each year.
- kragen 10mo ago
  Is Microsoft Windows more like a Ford Pinto with an exploding gas tank, a Lada, or what? I can't think of any car that's ever been sold whose design was optimized to spy on its users and trick them into buying to things and agreeing to contracts they didn't want. The Takata airbags that inflated at random, killing 26 people, seem similarly harmful (if to a far smaller number of people), but that's an unintentional defect. Unlike the recent Windows 11 screw-tightening, Takata responded by recalling the product, not making it explode more frequently.
  - JoshTriplett 10mo ago
    > I can't think of any car that's ever been sold whose design was optimized to spy on its users and trick them into buying to things and agreeing to contracts they didn't want. I've ridden in people's cars that are still displaying "agree to the terms of service"; I think a number of cars are starting to become far too much like computers.
    - drob518 10mo ago
      As a wise man once said, “Anything + computer = computer.”
    - degamad 10mo ago
      Those terms of service used to be "you should keep your eyes on the road, we are not responsible if you have a crash while playing with your satnav/entertainment system" and "you're responsible for where you drive, so we are not responsible if the satnav tells you to drive off a cliff or into a closed road". But now that we've trained users that they'll need to click accept on the screen, we can sneak any conditions we want in there about how we collect and use their data...
  - advael 10mo ago
    From my experience riding in them and news reports I've read, any tesla fits the bill Sadly, the most reliable signal american tech companies send is that they are primarily concerned with building a surveillance state. Whether this is for the US government or just their own fiefdoms (franchulates?) seems to vary a lot both within and between them, but neither prospect is particularly appealing to me as a prospective customer and/or target
    - cheschire 10mo ago
      Yep, Tesla was my first thought as well.
    - rusk 10mo ago
      > the most reliable signal american tech companies send is that they are primarily concerned with building a surveillance state Sagacious point. With emphasising. This is how non-European web business look to everyone.
  - mc32 10mo ago
    >like a Ford Pinto with an exploding gas tank" This bit of libel needs to be put to bed. The Pinto did not have a greater propensity to explode than other "in-class" cars and arguably had a better safety record than Beetles or Corollas of the time. Nader made himself a nice career of this libel, but it does not make it true. Of course, other cars didn't have a "memo" but that's beside the point.
    - kragen 10mo ago
      There is unsurprisingly an extensive account at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#Fuel_system_fires,_recalls,_and_litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#Fuel_system_fires,_...
      - mc32 10mo ago
        "These works reviewed misunderstandings related to the actual number of fire-related deaths related to the fuel system design, "wild and unsupported claims asserted in Pinto Madness and elsewhere",[65] the facts of the related legal cases, Grimshaw vs Ford Motor Company and State of Indiana vs Ford Motor Company, the applicable safety standards at the time of design, and the nature of the NHTSA investigations and subsequent vehicle recalls.[66] One described the Grimshaw case as "mythical" due to several significant factual misconceptions and their effect on the public's understanding."
        fsckboy 10mo ago
        that Pinto Madness led to exaggerated claims does not mean that the Pinto was either safe or as safe as other cars, just that a car with an unsafe record had a worse reputation. The Pinto had a problem with its gas tank when it was rear ended. If you think other cars also had problems, feel free to name them. But that doesn't make the Pinto safe when it was rear ended, and it wasn't safe because the gas tank was in the rear and vulnerable.
        Aloha 10mo ago
        Various cars did (any of the vehicles with the gas tank mounted above the rear axle), some also had issues with side impact (GM square body trucks). The 'crime' of the pinto was not that it was an unsafe car (it wasn't), it was that it could have been safer with a minimal (even by my standards, and I'm on the record as being opposed to mandatory backup cameras) increase in cost - that was why it grew the reputation, it was pure cost engineering (aka, cheapness - on the same level as the ignition switch failure issue GM had in the 2000's). People died, a fair number of them - because Ford didn't want to spend an additional amount of money - less than 50USD in today's money - on a car that retailed for 15,000USD in todays money.
  - ur-whale 10mo ago
    > I can't think of any car that's ever been sold whose design was optimized to spy on its users and trick them into buying to things and agreeing to contracts they didn't want. Just give it a couple of years.
  - rusk 10mo ago
    Windows Vista had suicide doors
- bacchusracine 10mo ago
  Don’t forget about the BeOS being the Batmobile!
- irishcoffee 10mo ago
  Apple is a shitty 3-series BMW, windows is a used Lexus that’s been in 3 accidents, and Linux is a 25 year old f250 that’s been a farm truck its whole life.
  - nullbyte808 10mo ago
    I'd say Apple is a 50's CHEVROLET CORVETTE. Breaks down less than Windows and has less intrusive technology (like ads, AI, ect.)
    - irishcoffee 10mo ago
      10 years ago I’d have agreed. Today it’s a shitty 3-series.
    - autoexec 10mo ago
      At least historically Apple would also have to run slower, while still costing much more than Windows. If a part gave you trouble you'd be forced to buy parts from the dealership and they'd sometimes tell you that you needed a new car when the same part on Windows could be repaired or replaced cheaply by any repair shop. You'd only be able to drive the Apple car on a handful of toll roads, although they were well paved while windows cars could be driven all over the place for free, even off-road if necessary, although that often resulted in flat tires making a triple A membership necessary and leading to a common misconception that apple was immune to flats.
    - lodovic 10mo ago
      I think the hate for Microsoft is more based on its popularity rather than Apple being "better". Both have dubious business practices. Ads in the start menu? Apple constantly pushes iCloud and related subscriptions. Market abuse? Apple is well known to remake and then block competing apps from competitors. Stability? Everyone knows the spinning beachball of death but acts like it never happens. User unfriendly? Apple constanly modifies its hardware to hurt independent repair outlets. I don't have that rosy 50's Chevy picture, it's more like a luxury coupe with a tighly locked hood. Sleek, desirable, you pay through the nose for every upgrade, and don't attempt to fix it yourself.
zubairq 10mo ago
Great stuff. I always love technical fluff about the history and philiosophy of operating systems
themafia 10mo ago
> Bill Gates and Paul Allen came up with an idea even stranger and more fantastical: selling computer operating systems. Please. They resold an already existing OS created by another individual. The idea that there was some "vision" here in being an IBM contractor is a total misunderstanding of the history of the time.
- homarp 10mo ago
  I understand this part to be more about the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists
- Nevermark 10mo ago
  The “strange” products they created to sell for money, were implementations of programming languages. When most software was (1) supplied by the large company that sold the large computer it ran on, (2) was written on one of those machines by the people who were going to use it, or (3) was hobby stuff, shared freely between hobbyists. The latter made sense, since taking and giving back to the community was a natural and fair system. Which served everyone, while obligating no one. And in any case, how would you charge for something with no physical form and that anyone can copy?
  - ssrc 10mo ago
    Arguably this started in the mainframe world in 1969, with IBM "unbundling" software and services from hardware sales, after the US government launched an antitrust suit against them.
  - fsckboy 10mo ago
    what kept Microsoft alive in the post-BASIC pre-OS era was actually sales of the SoftCard, a hardware card which put a Z80 microprocessor into an Apple II so Apple owners could run CP/M software like S-100 machines. It was the brainchild of Paul Allen, and was about the biggest market share CP/M platform there was. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-80_SoftCard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-80_SoftCard
- 10mo ago
homarp 10mo ago
previously https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41084795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41084795
- gnabgib 10mo ago
  It's an HN favourite, that's just 2024, there's also: 2020 (179 points, 64 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24998305 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24998305 2019 (148 points, 50 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20684764 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20684764 2018 (102 points, 13 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16843739 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16843739 2016 (145 points, 55 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12469797 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12469797 2008 (24 points, 12 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=408226 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=408226
  - dang 10mo ago
    Thanks! Macroexpanded: In the Beginning Was the Command Line (1999) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41084795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41084795 - July 2024 (260 comments) In the Beginning was the Command Line (1999) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37314225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37314225 - Aug 2023 (2 comments) In the Beginning Was the Command Line - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29373944 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29373944 - Nov 2021 (4 comments) In the Beginning was the Command Line (1999) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24998305 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24998305 - Nov 2020 (64 comments) In the beginning was the command line (1999) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20684764 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20684764 - Aug 2019 (50 comments) In the Beginning Was the Command Line (1999) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16843739 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16843739 - April 2018 (13 comments) In the Beginning Was the Command Line (1999) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12469797 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12469797 - Sept 2016 (54 comments) In the beginning was the command line - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11385647 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11385647 - March 2016 (1 comment) In the Beginning was the Command Line, by Neal Stephenson - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=408226 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=408226 - Dec 2008 (12 comments) In the beginning was the command line by Neil Stephenson - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=95912 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=95912 - Jan 2008 (5 comments) In the Beginning Was the Command Line - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47566 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47566 - Aug 2007 (2 comments) (Reposts are fine after a year or so, and in the case of perennials like this one, it's good to have a thread every once in a while so newer user cohorts learn what the classics are.)
nullbyte808 10mo ago
"Even the hardware that Windows ran on, when compared to the machines put out by Apple, looked like white-trash stuff, and still mostly does." Still true 25 years later!
1vuio0pswjnm7 10mo ago
"The cosmic operating system uses a command-line interface." "Now THAT is a cool operating system, and if such a thing were actually made available on the Internet (for free, of course) every hacker in the world would download it right away and then stay up all night long messing with it, spitting out universes right and left." At the same time, there will be uncool operating systems designed for data collection, surveillance and ad services
- IAmBroom 10mo ago
  The base units of the cosmos are binary (half-charge, charm, and spin) and trinary (color). It runs on Assembler.
  - 1vuio0pswjnm7 10mo ago
    CosmOS s/runs on/is written in/ If it's assembler, then what's the processor architecture What's it's endianness
tcherasaro 10mo ago
Classic. Due for another read to see how it’s holding up in the AI era.
jmclnx 10mo ago
How things have changed, late 90s, early 2000 was an exciting in Linux Land. Now, not as much excitement.
- fsckboy 10mo ago
  late 90s Sun and other companies were still selling high end workstations and servers running unix, and Microsoft was trying to dominate the server marekt. Linux won most all that and now there is no competition; that's why it seems quiet.
- Discordian93 10mo ago
  Like the other reply says, Linux already won on the server level where all the hype was 25 years ago. Now it's different but there's a lot of excitement still thaks to Valve's efforts to make gaming viable on Linux and to make ARM/x86 porting easier. Plus there's been a new wave of new users lately thanks to influencers recommending Linux in the wake of Windows 11's horribleness.
qubex 10mo ago
Have it in print. Fondly remember BeOS in the second half of the nineties; still have second-generation BeBox. I was amongst those who were dismayed when Apple “didn’t choose Plan B” and instead acquired NeXT (that I also had experience with, and whose hardware and software I adored, but that just didn’t “feel right” for the whole “multimedia convergence” visible on the horizon ahead). Guess I was wrong, but I still dote on my Batmobile, and the interface is so perfectly “nineties zany grunge” in retrospect: as chiselled as Motif but with a define nod to Keith Haring. Anyway, an awesome and prescient book. Anathem, Cryptonomicon, The Baroque Cycle… Neal Stephenson is an absolute master of his craft, though he is famous for failing to stick the landings sometimes.
- kemiller 10mo ago
  BeOS was so amazing; I ran it for a while on x86 hardware. Ahead of its time. But I always loved NeXT. (I'd go down to the local university computer store to drool over them. The staff all knew me by name.) And now, I carry one around with me everywhere I go. Living in the future...
- coolcoder613 10mo ago
  Have you tried Haiku recently?
  - qubex 10mo ago
    Yes, I’ve been watching them and running their builds for… fifteen to twenty years now. It’s gone from an effort to reimplement a fairly prescient OS to basically an exercise in software archeology, since even achieving the project’s goals of a fully compatible reinplentation will be so severely limited compared to modern-day OSes it won’t be in any way ‘competitive’ with what is broadly available now, for free (free Linux tanks now have railguns as artillery, antigravity regulators instead of tracks, are built out of magical titanium foam alloys that can protect better while weighing less… you get the point). They have all the sci-fi tech of the erstwhile Batmobile and are on the lot with the keys in the ignition and a sign that reads “take me”.
    - 10mo ago
hekkle 10mo ago
> Prospective station wagon buyer: "I know what you say is true...but...er...I don't know how to maintain a tank!" > Bullhorn: "You don't know how to maintain a station wagon either!" Literally every conversation I have had with people where I have tried to get them to use Linux :').
bee_rider 10mo ago
> We had a human/computer interface a hundred years before we had computers. When computers came into being around the time of the Second World War, humans, quite naturally, communicated with them by simply grafting them on to the already-existing technologies for translating letters into bits and vice versa: teletypes and punch card machines. Is this… right? I thought some of the earliest mechanical computers (as opposed to human computers) that had much real uptake were “fire control computers,” for things like naval guns (for example). You move around dials and cranks to put the measurements in. I’d call this essentially graphical… it isn’t a series of text based commands that you issue, but a collection of intuitive UI elements, each of which is used to communicate a particular piece of data to the computer. Of course the GUI of the past was made of gages and levers instead of pixels, but that’s just an implementation detail. I much prefer the command line to a gui, but I think we should call it what it is: an improvement. A much more precise and repeatable way of talking to the computer, in comparison to cranking cranks and poking dials. And a general, endlessly flexible channel that can represent basically any type of information, at the cost of not necessary being intuitive or glance-able.
- mjevans 10mo ago
  In this context I believe 'computer' refers to only general purpose computing devices, not fixed function calculation machines. In some sense, early player pianos (IIRC with holes in paper that controlled key presses) weren't computers, but were a related precursor technology / infrastructure.
- kragen 10mo ago
  This is a terminological confusion. The "computers" you're describing gave their name to the universal symbol manipulators we now call "computers" because, historically, the universal symbol manipulators were originally funded to perform mathematical calculations. They don't have much else in common. The "computers" that Stephenson is talking about are the universal symbol manipulators, the smallest and most limited of which can boot Linux: https://dmitry.gr/?r=05.Projects&proj=35.%20Linux4004 https://dmitry.gr/?r=05.Projects&proj=35.%20Linux4004
- btilly 10mo ago
kmeisthax 10mo ago
I absolutely love this article, but every time I see it do the rounds online I have to nitpick at least one thing from it. Last time it was the anecdote about MPW[0], and today I'm going to nitpick the car metaphor. The metaphors for Windows and MacOS are swapped. Windows' technical underpinnings were - from the start - way better than Apple's. Microsoft actually bothered to copy everything from XEROX PARC, albeit poorly, while Apple saw the fancy windows-and-desktop UI and ignored the object system underpinning it. This isn't me making a jab at Apple - Jobs himself said it when he was at NeXT. Windows 95 and NT also both brought memory protection to the existing Windows API. Apple had spent several years trying and failing to build a memory protected Mac OS before just giving up and buying NeXT. The correct metaphors are: - Someone working at the phone company secretly designs a tram (UNIX). They're actually prohibited from selling vehicles, but they license the design under the table to a bunch of universities. A bunch of tram manufacturers make trams based off the phone company design. - A wheel factory (Microsoft) sells wheels for bicycles. Bicycle dealerships crop up everywhere using their wheels. Even the railroads (IBM) want to get in on it, and they ship a terrible bike that everyone copies because it's the railway bike. - Phone company designed trams are really popular and every city has like five of them. Except they keep breaking down and all the control cabs are just slightly different, so it pisses off the operators. Some kids at Berkeley try to make their own standard tram design (BSD) but they get sued by the phone company and nobody uses it. - A car dealership (XEROX) moves in. They sell SUVs (Xerox STAR). They cost $100k each, and they only sell them in huge fleets to big corporations because XEROX wants to compete with the railroad. Nobody buys them and they leave town, but not before giving a demo of their tech to the last bicycle dealer (Apple) not using the railway design. - The bicycle dealership decides to build their own SUV (Lisa) and a moped (Mac). The SUV is a huge flop while the moped is a minor success. Their CEO gets fired by the board and starts a trucking company (NeXT). - A homeless man that lives on public transit and thinks vehicles should be free starts working on his own tram (GNU), but he overengineers the engine (Hurd) and it doesn't work at all. Still, he's not being sued by the phone company, so people start putting his parts into their trams anyway. - The wheel factory learned how to make a moped from selling wheels to the moped dealer. So they sell their own moped upgrade kit (Windows). It works with any bicycle, but it looks like shit, even though it has the same power as an SUV engine. - The wheel factory also starts work on a joint venture with the local railroad to produce their own trucks (OS/2). They can't agree on anything and divorce after a few years. - Turns out mopeds suck! They break down constantly and need an oil change every 400 miles. The moped dealer starts work on a station wagon (Copland). A prototype is produced that's about as elegant as The Homer. It is unceremoniously cancelled. - The wheel factory also has problems with their moped kits breaking down, but since they sold a lot more of them, they're the ones getting the reputation of selling an unreliable vehicle. They decide to design a truck of their own (Windows NT) and a car made out of moped parts (Windows 95) and sell the design to all the bicycle (now car) dealers. - The moped company is ridiculed by the car dealers and nobody buys their elegantly designed mopeds. They wind up buying the trucking company. - Someone in Finland designs an electric motor (Linux) that happens to fit in the homeless guy's tram. People hail this as a revolution in public transport, even though cities are full of NIMBYs who tore down the tramways and put in buses that ride worse and get delayed in traffic. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24998305 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24998305
sho 10mo ago
Timely. In the age of AI, the command line is more relevant than ever..
wodow 10mo ago
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Beginning..._Was_the_Command_Line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Beginning..._Was_the_Co... for how Stephenson considered the essay obsolete five years later.
- theandrewbailey 10mo ago
  > There was a competing bicycle dealership next door (Apple) that one day began selling motorized vehicles--expensive but attractively styled cars with their innards hermetically sealed, so that how they worked was something of a mystery. I know Neal said the essay was quickly obsolete, especially in regards to Mac, but I'll always remember this reference about hermetically sealed Apple products. To this day, Apple doesn't want anyone to know how their products work, or how to fix them, to the point where upgrading or expanding internal hardware is mostly impossible (no M-series Mac Pro discrete GPUs?). Even after 25 years, some things never change.
- ogogmad 10mo ago
  Given that LLMs can make their own calls to the command line, I think it's obsolete ten times over. Much of the learning curve - and therefore most of the downside from CLIs, is now gone. A person can now learn only the most basic facts about operating systems - and let the AI handle the rest. Given all of that, I'm not sure where the world of software and IT is heading. There's a danger though that people won't even learn the basics.
  - anthk 10mo ago
    A) LLM's caused disasters because juniors have no clue on the context of the applying commands. B) With the current enshittification, your comment it's the obsolete one. 100 times over. Why? Enjoy your crappy iOS'ified OS with a maze of dependencies (Python3 for instance), SIP and updates breaking everything. C) If any, the newbies are the doomed ones, as they don't know anything about computers. Solaris SMF commands (or AIX ones) blindly applied ro RHEL systems? Why not?
    - ogogmad 10mo ago

188 points by wseqyrku 10mo ago

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

Is this the origin of the classic analogy that Windows is a station wagon, Mac OS is a European luxury sedan, and Linux is a free tank? I had no idea that the author Neal Stephenson came up with that. The analogy is definitely a bit outdated now, what with Windows 8 then 10 then 11 getting aggressively less user-friendly each year.

kragen 10mo ago
Is Microsoft Windows more like a Ford Pinto with an exploding gas tank, a Lada, or what? I can't think of any car that's ever been sold whose design was optimized to spy on its users and trick them into buying to things and agreeing to contracts they didn't want. The Takata airbags that inflated at random, killing 26 people, seem similarly harmful (if to a far smaller number of people), but that's an unintentional defect. Unlike the recent Windows 11 screw-tightening, Takata responded by recalling the product, not making it explode more frequently.
- JoshTriplett 10mo ago
  > I can't think of any car that's ever been sold whose design was optimized to spy on its users and trick them into buying to things and agreeing to contracts they didn't want. I've ridden in people's cars that are still displaying "agree to the terms of service"; I think a number of cars are starting to become far too much like computers.
  - drob518 10mo ago
    As a wise man once said, “Anything + computer = computer.”
  - degamad 10mo ago
    Those terms of service used to be "you should keep your eyes on the road, we are not responsible if you have a crash while playing with your satnav/entertainment system" and "you're responsible for where you drive, so we are not responsible if the satnav tells you to drive off a cliff or into a closed road". But now that we've trained users that they'll need to click accept on the screen, we can sneak any conditions we want in there about how we collect and use their data...
- advael 10mo ago
  From my experience riding in them and news reports I've read, any tesla fits the bill Sadly, the most reliable signal american tech companies send is that they are primarily concerned with building a surveillance state. Whether this is for the US government or just their own fiefdoms (franchulates?) seems to vary a lot both within and between them, but neither prospect is particularly appealing to me as a prospective customer and/or target
  - cheschire 10mo ago
    Yep, Tesla was my first thought as well.
  - rusk 10mo ago
    > the most reliable signal american tech companies send is that they are primarily concerned with building a surveillance state Sagacious point. With emphasising. This is how non-European web business look to everyone.
- mc32 10mo ago
  >like a Ford Pinto with an exploding gas tank" This bit of libel needs to be put to bed. The Pinto did not have a greater propensity to explode than other "in-class" cars and arguably had a better safety record than Beetles or Corollas of the time. Nader made himself a nice career of this libel, but it does not make it true. Of course, other cars didn't have a "memo" but that's beside the point.
  - kragen 10mo ago
    There is unsurprisingly an extensive account at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#Fuel_system_fires,_recalls,_and_litigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Pinto#Fuel_system_fires,_...
    - mc32 10mo ago
      "These works reviewed misunderstandings related to the actual number of fire-related deaths related to the fuel system design, "wild and unsupported claims asserted in Pinto Madness and elsewhere",[65] the facts of the related legal cases, Grimshaw vs Ford Motor Company and State of Indiana vs Ford Motor Company, the applicable safety standards at the time of design, and the nature of the NHTSA investigations and subsequent vehicle recalls.[66] One described the Grimshaw case as "mythical" due to several significant factual misconceptions and their effect on the public's understanding."
      - fsckboy 10mo ago
        that Pinto Madness led to exaggerated claims does not mean that the Pinto was either safe or as safe as other cars, just that a car with an unsafe record had a worse reputation. The Pinto had a problem with its gas tank when it was rear ended. If you think other cars also had problems, feel free to name them. But that doesn't make the Pinto safe when it was rear ended, and it wasn't safe because the gas tank was in the rear and vulnerable.
        Aloha 10mo ago
        Various cars did (any of the vehicles with the gas tank mounted above the rear axle), some also had issues with side impact (GM square body trucks). The 'crime' of the pinto was not that it was an unsafe car (it wasn't), it was that it could have been safer with a minimal (even by my standards, and I'm on the record as being opposed to mandatory backup cameras) increase in cost - that was why it grew the reputation, it was pure cost engineering (aka, cheapness - on the same level as the ignition switch failure issue GM had in the 2000's). People died, a fair number of them - because Ford didn't want to spend an additional amount of money - less than 50USD in today's money - on a car that retailed for 15,000USD in todays money.
- ur-whale 10mo ago
  > I can't think of any car that's ever been sold whose design was optimized to spy on its users and trick them into buying to things and agreeing to contracts they didn't want. Just give it a couple of years.
- rusk 10mo ago
  Windows Vista had suicide doors
bacchusracine 10mo ago
Don’t forget about the BeOS being the Batmobile!
irishcoffee 10mo ago
Apple is a shitty 3-series BMW, windows is a used Lexus that’s been in 3 accidents, and Linux is a 25 year old f250 that’s been a farm truck its whole life.
- nullbyte808 10mo ago
  I'd say Apple is a 50's CHEVROLET CORVETTE. Breaks down less than Windows and has less intrusive technology (like ads, AI, ect.)
  - irishcoffee 10mo ago
    10 years ago I’d have agreed. Today it’s a shitty 3-series.
  - autoexec 10mo ago
    At least historically Apple would also have to run slower, while still costing much more than Windows. If a part gave you trouble you'd be forced to buy parts from the dealership and they'd sometimes tell you that you needed a new car when the same part on Windows could be repaired or replaced cheaply by any repair shop. You'd only be able to drive the Apple car on a handful of toll roads, although they were well paved while windows cars could be driven all over the place for free, even off-road if necessary, although that often resulted in flat tires making a triple A membership necessary and leading to a common misconception that apple was immune to flats.
  - lodovic 10mo ago
    I think the hate for Microsoft is more based on its popularity rather than Apple being "better". Both have dubious business practices. Ads in the start menu? Apple constantly pushes iCloud and related subscriptions. Market abuse? Apple is well known to remake and then block competing apps from competitors. Stability? Everyone knows the spinning beachball of death but acts like it never happens. User unfriendly? Apple constanly modifies its hardware to hurt independent repair outlets. I don't have that rosy 50's Chevy picture, it's more like a luxury coupe with a tighly locked hood. Sleek, desirable, you pay through the nose for every upgrade, and don't attempt to fix it yourself.

zubairq 10mo ago

Great stuff. I always love technical fluff about the history and philiosophy of operating systems

themafia 10mo ago

> Bill Gates and Paul Allen came up with an idea even stranger and more fantastical: selling computer operating systems. Please. They resold an already existing OS created by another individual. The idea that there was some "vision" here in being an IBM contractor is a total misunderstanding of the history of the time.

homarp 10mo ago
I understand this part to be more about the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists
Nevermark 10mo ago
The “strange” products they created to sell for money, were implementations of programming languages. When most software was (1) supplied by the large company that sold the large computer it ran on, (2) was written on one of those machines by the people who were going to use it, or (3) was hobby stuff, shared freely between hobbyists. The latter made sense, since taking and giving back to the community was a natural and fair system. Which served everyone, while obligating no one. And in any case, how would you charge for something with no physical form and that anyone can copy?
- ssrc 10mo ago
  Arguably this started in the mainframe world in 1969, with IBM "unbundling" software and services from hardware sales, after the US government launched an antitrust suit against them.
- fsckboy 10mo ago
  what kept Microsoft alive in the post-BASIC pre-OS era was actually sales of the SoftCard, a hardware card which put a Z80 microprocessor into an Apple II so Apple owners could run CP/M software like S-100 machines. It was the brainchild of Paul Allen, and was about the biggest market share CP/M platform there was. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-80_SoftCard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-80_SoftCard
10mo ago

homarp 10mo ago

previously https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41084795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41084795

gnabgib 10mo ago
It's an HN favourite, that's just 2024, there's also: 2020 (179 points, 64 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24998305 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24998305 2019 (148 points, 50 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20684764 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20684764 2018 (102 points, 13 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16843739 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16843739 2016 (145 points, 55 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12469797 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12469797 2008 (24 points, 12 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=408226 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=408226
- dang 10mo ago
  Thanks! Macroexpanded: In the Beginning Was the Command Line (1999) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41084795 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41084795 - July 2024 (260 comments) In the Beginning was the Command Line (1999) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37314225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37314225 - Aug 2023 (2 comments) In the Beginning Was the Command Line - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29373944 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29373944 - Nov 2021 (4 comments) In the Beginning was the Command Line (1999) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24998305 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24998305 - Nov 2020 (64 comments) In the beginning was the command line (1999) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20684764 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20684764 - Aug 2019 (50 comments) In the Beginning Was the Command Line (1999) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16843739 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16843739 - April 2018 (13 comments) In the Beginning Was the Command Line (1999) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12469797 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12469797 - Sept 2016 (54 comments) In the beginning was the command line - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11385647 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11385647 - March 2016 (1 comment) In the Beginning was the Command Line, by Neal Stephenson - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=408226 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=408226 - Dec 2008 (12 comments) In the beginning was the command line by Neil Stephenson - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=95912 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=95912 - Jan 2008 (5 comments) In the Beginning Was the Command Line - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47566 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47566 - Aug 2007 (2 comments) (Reposts are fine after a year or so, and in the case of perennials like this one, it's good to have a thread every once in a while so newer user cohorts learn what the classics are.)

nullbyte808 10mo ago

"Even the hardware that Windows ran on, when compared to the machines put out by Apple, looked like white-trash stuff, and still mostly does." Still true 25 years later!

1vuio0pswjnm7 10mo ago

"The cosmic operating system uses a command-line interface." "Now THAT is a cool operating system, and if such a thing were actually made available on the Internet (for free, of course) every hacker in the world would download it right away and then stay up all night long messing with it, spitting out universes right and left." At the same time, there will be uncool operating systems designed for data collection, surveillance and ad services

IAmBroom 10mo ago
The base units of the cosmos are binary (half-charge, charm, and spin) and trinary (color). It runs on Assembler.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 10mo ago
  CosmOS s/runs on/is written in/ If it's assembler, then what's the processor architecture What's it's endianness

tcherasaro 10mo ago

Classic. Due for another read to see how it’s holding up in the AI era.

jmclnx 10mo ago

How things have changed, late 90s, early 2000 was an exciting in Linux Land. Now, not as much excitement.

fsckboy 10mo ago
late 90s Sun and other companies were still selling high end workstations and servers running unix, and Microsoft was trying to dominate the server marekt. Linux won most all that and now there is no competition; that's why it seems quiet.
Discordian93 10mo ago
Like the other reply says, Linux already won on the server level where all the hype was 25 years ago. Now it's different but there's a lot of excitement still thaks to Valve's efforts to make gaming viable on Linux and to make ARM/x86 porting easier. Plus there's been a new wave of new users lately thanks to influencers recommending Linux in the wake of Windows 11's horribleness.

qubex 10mo ago

Have it in print. Fondly remember BeOS in the second half of the nineties; still have second-generation BeBox. I was amongst those who were dismayed when Apple “didn’t choose Plan B” and instead acquired NeXT (that I also had experience with, and whose hardware and software I adored, but that just didn’t “feel right” for the whole “multimedia convergence” visible on the horizon ahead). Guess I was wrong, but I still dote on my Batmobile, and the interface is so perfectly “nineties zany grunge” in retrospect: as chiselled as Motif but with a define nod to Keith Haring. Anyway, an awesome and prescient book. Anathem, Cryptonomicon, The Baroque Cycle… Neal Stephenson is an absolute master of his craft, though he is famous for failing to stick the landings sometimes.

kemiller 10mo ago
BeOS was so amazing; I ran it for a while on x86 hardware. Ahead of its time. But I always loved NeXT. (I'd go down to the local university computer store to drool over them. The staff all knew me by name.) And now, I carry one around with me everywhere I go. Living in the future...
coolcoder613 10mo ago
Have you tried Haiku recently?
- qubex 10mo ago
  Yes, I’ve been watching them and running their builds for… fifteen to twenty years now. It’s gone from an effort to reimplement a fairly prescient OS to basically an exercise in software archeology, since even achieving the project’s goals of a fully compatible reinplentation will be so severely limited compared to modern-day OSes it won’t be in any way ‘competitive’ with what is broadly available now, for free (free Linux tanks now have railguns as artillery, antigravity regulators instead of tracks, are built out of magical titanium foam alloys that can protect better while weighing less… you get the point). They have all the sci-fi tech of the erstwhile Batmobile and are on the lot with the keys in the ignition and a sign that reads “take me”.
  - 10mo ago

hekkle 10mo ago

> Prospective station wagon buyer: "I know what you say is true...but...er...I don't know how to maintain a tank!" > Bullhorn: "You don't know how to maintain a station wagon either!" Literally every conversation I have had with people where I have tried to get them to use Linux :').

bee_rider 10mo ago

> We had a human/computer interface a hundred years before we had computers. When computers came into being around the time of the Second World War, humans, quite naturally, communicated with them by simply grafting them on to the already-existing technologies for translating letters into bits and vice versa: teletypes and punch card machines. Is this… right? I thought some of the earliest mechanical computers (as opposed to human computers) that had much real uptake were “fire control computers,” for things like naval guns (for example). You move around dials and cranks to put the measurements in. I’d call this essentially graphical… it isn’t a series of text based commands that you issue, but a collection of intuitive UI elements, each of which is used to communicate a particular piece of data to the computer. Of course the GUI of the past was made of gages and levers instead of pixels, but that’s just an implementation detail. I much prefer the command line to a gui, but I think we should call it what it is: an improvement. A much more precise and repeatable way of talking to the computer, in comparison to cranking cranks and poking dials. And a general, endlessly flexible channel that can represent basically any type of information, at the cost of not necessary being intuitive or glance-able.

mjevans 10mo ago
In this context I believe 'computer' refers to only general purpose computing devices, not fixed function calculation machines. In some sense, early player pianos (IIRC with holes in paper that controlled key presses) weren't computers, but were a related precursor technology / infrastructure.
kragen 10mo ago
This is a terminological confusion. The "computers" you're describing gave their name to the universal symbol manipulators we now call "computers" because, historically, the universal symbol manipulators were originally funded to perform mathematical calculations. They don't have much else in common. The "computers" that Stephenson is talking about are the universal symbol manipulators, the smallest and most limited of which can boot Linux: https://dmitry.gr/?r=05.Projects&proj=35.%20Linux4004 https://dmitry.gr/?r=05.Projects&proj=35.%20Linux4004
btilly 10mo ago

kmeisthax 10mo ago

I absolutely love this article, but every time I see it do the rounds online I have to nitpick at least one thing from it. Last time it was the anecdote about MPW[0], and today I'm going to nitpick the car metaphor. The metaphors for Windows and MacOS are swapped. Windows' technical underpinnings were - from the start - way better than Apple's. Microsoft actually bothered to copy everything from XEROX PARC, albeit poorly, while Apple saw the fancy windows-and-desktop UI and ignored the object system underpinning it. This isn't me making a jab at Apple - Jobs himself said it when he was at NeXT. Windows 95 and NT also both brought memory protection to the existing Windows API. Apple had spent several years trying and failing to build a memory protected Mac OS before just giving up and buying NeXT. The correct metaphors are: - Someone working at the phone company secretly designs a tram (UNIX). They're actually prohibited from selling vehicles, but they license the design under the table to a bunch of universities. A bunch of tram manufacturers make trams based off the phone company design. - A wheel factory (Microsoft) sells wheels for bicycles. Bicycle dealerships crop up everywhere using their wheels. Even the railroads (IBM) want to get in on it, and they ship a terrible bike that everyone copies because it's the railway bike. - Phone company designed trams are really popular and every city has like five of them. Except they keep breaking down and all the control cabs are just slightly different, so it pisses off the operators. Some kids at Berkeley try to make their own standard tram design (BSD) but they get sued by the phone company and nobody uses it. - A car dealership (XEROX) moves in. They sell SUVs (Xerox STAR). They cost $100k each, and they only sell them in huge fleets to big corporations because XEROX wants to compete with the railroad. Nobody buys them and they leave town, but not before giving a demo of their tech to the last bicycle dealer (Apple) not using the railway design. - The bicycle dealership decides to build their own SUV (Lisa) and a moped (Mac). The SUV is a huge flop while the moped is a minor success. Their CEO gets fired by the board and starts a trucking company (NeXT). - A homeless man that lives on public transit and thinks vehicles should be free starts working on his own tram (GNU), but he overengineers the engine (Hurd) and it doesn't work at all. Still, he's not being sued by the phone company, so people start putting his parts into their trams anyway. - The wheel factory learned how to make a moped from selling wheels to the moped dealer. So they sell their own moped upgrade kit (Windows). It works with any bicycle, but it looks like shit, even though it has the same power as an SUV engine. - The wheel factory also starts work on a joint venture with the local railroad to produce their own trucks (OS/2). They can't agree on anything and divorce after a few years. - Turns out mopeds suck! They break down constantly and need an oil change every 400 miles. The moped dealer starts work on a station wagon (Copland). A prototype is produced that's about as elegant as The Homer. It is unceremoniously cancelled. - The wheel factory also has problems with their moped kits breaking down, but since they sold a lot more of them, they're the ones getting the reputation of selling an unreliable vehicle. They decide to design a truck of their own (Windows NT) and a car made out of moped parts (Windows 95) and sell the design to all the bicycle (now car) dealers. - The moped company is ridiculed by the car dealers and nobody buys their elegantly designed mopeds. They wind up buying the trucking company. - Someone in Finland designs an electric motor (Linux) that happens to fit in the homeless guy's tram. People hail this as a revolution in public transport, even though cities are full of NIMBYs who tore down the tramways and put in buses that ride worse and get delayed in traffic. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24998305 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24998305

sho 10mo ago

Timely. In the age of AI, the command line is more relevant than ever..

wodow 10mo ago

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Beginning..._Was_the_Command_Line https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Beginning..._Was_the_Co... for how Stephenson considered the essay obsolete five years later.

theandrewbailey 10mo ago
> There was a competing bicycle dealership next door (Apple) that one day began selling motorized vehicles--expensive but attractively styled cars with their innards hermetically sealed, so that how they worked was something of a mystery. I know Neal said the essay was quickly obsolete, especially in regards to Mac, but I'll always remember this reference about hermetically sealed Apple products. To this day, Apple doesn't want anyone to know how their products work, or how to fix them, to the point where upgrading or expanding internal hardware is mostly impossible (no M-series Mac Pro discrete GPUs?). Even after 25 years, some things never change.
ogogmad 10mo ago
Given that LLMs can make their own calls to the command line, I think it's obsolete ten times over. Much of the learning curve - and therefore most of the downside from CLIs, is now gone. A person can now learn only the most basic facts about operating systems - and let the AI handle the rest. Given all of that, I'm not sure where the world of software and IT is heading. There's a danger though that people won't even learn the basics.
- anthk 10mo ago
  A) LLM's caused disasters because juniors have no clue on the context of the applying commands. B) With the current enshittification, your comment it's the obsolete one. 100 times over. Why? Enjoy your crappy iOS'ified OS with a maze of dependencies (Python3 for instance), SIP and updates breaking everything. C) If any, the newbies are the doomed ones, as they don't know anything about computers. Solaris SMF commands (or AIX ones) blindly applied ro RHEL systems? Why not?
  - ogogmad 10mo ago