10 ms·

Fin – Keith Wesolowski retires

97 points by ABS 12y ago

runin2k1 12y ago
Wrong author -- See Keith M Wesolowski
- ABS 12y ago
  fixed, thanks
  - bcantrill 12y ago
    Phew -- thank you! (And it's "Keith Wesolowski", for whatever it's worth.) Personally, I would title this "A young software engineer retires", but I'm 0-for-1 on HN titles today.[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8816101 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8816101
    - ABS 12y ago
      and fixed again, looks like I'm unable to write in an input box today... regarding the title: what you said :-)
    - mwcampbell 12y ago
      I, for one, like your proposed title. It captures a salient fact about the author which makes a big difference in how one views the post.
joshbaptiste 12y ago
The net result of all this is that we have data centres occupying many hectares, filled with computers that are architecturally identical to a Packard Bell 486 desktop running MS-DOS long enough to boot a crippled and amateurish clone of Unix circa 1987, and an endless array of complex, kludged-up hardware and software components intended to hide all of that. I would ask for a show of hands from those who consider this progress, but too many are happily riding the gravy train this abomination enables. Woah.. that statement stung, mostly because I agree with it and realize that I'm one of the people that he refers to in his post.
- trhway 12y ago
  >data centres occupying many hectares, filled with computers that are architecturally identical to a Packard Bell 486 desktop running MS-DOS long enough to boot a crippled and amateurish clone of Unix circa 1987, and an endless array of complex, kludged-up hardware and software components intended to hide all of that. I would ask for a show of hands from those who consider this progress, that's definitely a huge progress. Successfully building a coherent computer size of many hectares out of commodity components... And that it doesn't matter whether it is 486 desktop or something else is among the great of achievements of today. Keith and the likes are stuck in the past when the content/architecture of that single box was important and thus they (and all their ecosystem) have been limited physically and mentally by a biggest box one can build (like SunFire 10K). Network is the computer - Keith's and my common former employer was saying. While may be not there yet, today we already have "AWS is the computer", "private FB datacenters is the computer", etc...
  - otterley 12y ago
    Not everything Sun made was big iron; even their small soldiers (Netra, SunBlade etc) used many of the same technologies (Open Boot PROM, etc.) that made their big-iron great. And their hardware and software documentation was second to none. A network of good boxes is still better than a network of IBM BIOS-booting junk with weak telemetry, non-ECC RAM, and hastily engineered I/O controllers.
    - trhway 12y ago
      >A network of good boxes is still better than a network of IBM BIOS-booting junk with weak telemetry, non-ECC RAM, and hastily engineered I/O controllers. in a magic world of unlimited resources - yes. Unfortunately, engineering is a discipline dealing with constraints. Sun failed to get that. 20 boxes of that "junk" for the same amount of money as 1 "good" box - tough choice, isn't it? :) And by the way, wrt. "good" vs "junk", 10 years ago Sun hardware, like motherboards, layout, soldiering, its architecture/buses was already worse/behind than commodity x86/64 stuff produced by second rate Taiwan manufacturers. >Not everything Sun made was big iron; even their small soldiers (Netra, SunBlade etc) used many of the same technologies (Open Boot PROM, etc.) that made their big-iron great. that is kind of at the root of the problem - even smaller stuff was as result priced toward big iron, i.e. bad price/performance.
Flow 12y ago
I wonder what work/research would satisfy his need for "the next thing" / "the right way"? Maybe working with Alan Kay and the Viewpoint Institute? Or would he perhaps consider what they are trying to accomplish navel-gazing?
- _delirium 12y ago
  The "Dogpatch" proposal he co-wrote/linked suggests some directions he seems to think would be promising: http://us-east.manta.joyent.com/wesolows/public/dogpatch.pdf http://us-east.manta.joyent.com/wesolows/public/dogpatch.pdf
  - bronson 12y ago
    Hooooly cow. Surprising that comes from a guy who claims to hate second system syndrome so much.
mwcampbell 12y ago
One of his central criticisms is that the software stack is ossifying upward. Yet when a project tried to simplify a layer of the stack, as Go did with its toolchain, he criticized it for being NIH. I guess the problem is that everyone has their own pet concern which they will vehemently defend (one of mine is accessibility in GUI toolkits), and thus things will never get simpler, at least in mainstream systems that are more or less designed by committee. Regarding UEFI, I wonder if Joyent has enough clout that it could push the relevant suppliers to support coreboot. Edit: I guess the answer is no, since they couldn't interest anyone in Dogpatch. From a Sun/Illumos aficionado's perspective, has GNU/Linux always been amateur, or is that more recent, e.g. with the intrusion of D-Bus and systemd into servers?
- bcantrill 12y ago
  Assuming the last question is earnest: while I think "amateur" is a tad strong, I do think that Linux suffers enormously from NIH; it remains the first system (or first Unix system, anyway) for many of its contributors, who seem to know no other way -- and this shows up all over the system.[1] In terms of how this has changed over time: if anything, it used to be much, much worse. For example, Linus' attitude on kernel debugging circa 2000[2] is not merely amateurish, and not merely irresponsible, but actively dangerous. While his attitudes have soften over the years, there still remain striking differences of engineering principle between Linux and other systems -- of which systemd is merely (in my opinion) one particularly egregious manifestation. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrfD3pC0VSs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrfD3pC0VSs [2] https://lkml.org/lkml/2000/9/6/65 https://lkml.org/lkml/2000/9/6/65
  - stefantalpalaru 12y ago
    Don't blame the systemd wart on Linux - it's user level madness that can abuse any kernel, even your precious illumos ;-)
    - BrainInAJar 12y ago
      an operating system comprises more than just a kernel.
stefantalpalaru 12y ago
> GNU/Linux is definitely not the place to look for exciting OS work. Then why did Joyent port KVM from Linux to Illumos? https://github.com/joyent/illumos-kvm https://github.com/joyent/illumos-kvm
- chronid 12y ago
  They could have the need to create Linux VMs, and that was the best way to do that. It does not mean porting KVM is "exciting OS work", though. Even the actual craze around linux containers technology sometimes baffles me. Zones/Jails have existed, for like... Forever.
  - xorcist 12y ago
    The first Linux container implementation to my knowledge was linux-vserver, which shipped in 1998. Solaris Zones shipped in 2004. So, yeah, like... forever.
    - chronid 12y ago
      VServer and Jails/Zones are not really the same thing, IIRC, and 1.0 was around 2004 too anyway, while still not offering equivalent functionality. If I remember incorrectly, I stand corrected on the timeline! I've got no problem with that. But my point remains: even containers are "old" news, while speaking of "exciting OS things".
  - bcantrill 12y ago
    It was actually pretty interesting -- terrifying, even.[1][2] Not that I disagree with your assertion about zones, of course -- and note that we are (very) actively working on a Linux compatibility layer for illumos zones.[3] [1] http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2011/08/15/kvm-on-illumos/ http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2011/08/15/kvm-on-illumos/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_Ye89cDmKU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_Ye89cDmKU [3] http://www.slideshare.net/bcantrill/illumos-lx http://www.slideshare.net/bcantrill/illumos-lx
vezzy-fnord 12y ago
The author is rather inconsistent here. On one hand, he's opposed to the contemporary Desktop Linux philosophy which tries to poorly imitate the monolithic stacks of OS X and Windows, but he also brutally lambasts the innovations behind Plan 9, as apparently for all of his derision towards modern computing, he finds starting from first principles to be anathema for whatever reason. His proposed solution is not given, but it's hinted towards Solaris/illumos. So... a System V Unix. A well designed and modern SysV Unix with facilities that other Unices haven't implemented as well, that is certain, but his complaint that our hardware and software is stuck in old decades is ironic as a result.
- BrainInAJar 12y ago
  it is possible to agree with the general tone of an article while still disagreeing with some of the finer points.
jfe 12y ago
I may be a bit biased -- the Bell Labs guys are major influences of mine -- but I think the criticism of Pike, et. al is unfair. I understood Pike's "systems research is irrelevant" presentation to be a tongue-in-cheek observation about the decline of systems research, not a statement that "OS research is dead" and we shouldn't work on it, but maybe I'm mistaken. I don't consider Plan9 to be a failure, at least in the engineering sense. Many ideas pioneered in Plan9 influenced developments in the Linux kernel. It actually seems contradictory to me that Keith spends so much time flaming the community for not trying something new, then berates researchers like Pike for doing exactly that.
mwcampbell 12y ago
Thinking about this some more, I suppose the take-away for software engineers who don't want to retire young is this: Kill any sense of aesthetics you may have; always back the platform or technology that appears to be winning, regardless of what you feel its merits are; never hope for the underdog to win; worse is better; either be a mercenary, or look for ways to do some good within the broken system without trying to fix the parts you can't change. Is that too negative a conclusion?
- sanderjd 12y ago
  I find screeds from engineers about how broken everything is to be directly at odds with the observable truth of vastly more people with less technical expertise having vastly more access to technology that provides them value. I think the take-away is to get some perspective and stop caring so much about the state of "the system" and just try to create things that are valuable to people.
  - digi_owl 12y ago
    Seems to boil down to the age old "perfect is the enemy of good", with said engineers aiming for perfection while seeing (mere) good triumph.
    - sanderjd 12y ago
      Ah, yeah, spot on. That's exactly what it is, and I've always related to that expression.
- toyg 12y ago
  That's a cynical view of the workplace that you could easily generalise to any institution or marketplace. The good guys never win, it's all about kissing a$$, sell anything that's profitable, milk it until it's dry, etc etc. No market is perfect, and the IT market even less so, dominated as it is by a handful of US companies riding an Asian supply chain fundamentally incapable of (or unwilling to) creative disruption. But it's still more dynamic and open to innovative players than the car market or almost any other market you could mention. The parable of Apple alone should be taken as proof that "it can be done"... Just because some segments seem to be more conservative than others, it doesn't mean the whole sector is doomed; it's just a sign of consolidation in an industry that is barely 50-year old and still very much wild compared to any other sector out there.
YuriNiyazov 12y ago
Who is this guy? I was under the impression this was the author of dtrace due to the domain name. That seems wrong, he's not listed as a dtrace author on wikipedia.
raspasov 12y ago
Maybe this will be interesting to the author, a complete re-think of computers starting from the hardware level by HP Labs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPQ1AheNro8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPQ1AheNro8
khc 12y ago
> I’m not going to do the thing where I try to name everyone > I’ve enjoyed working with, or even everyone who has helped > me out over the years. As someone who've worked with Keith for a few months, I am going ahead and say that he's definitely someone enjoyed working with. Opinionated, yes. Very smart? Also yes.
bronson 12y ago
Meanwhile, everyone wants to rave about OpenStack, a software particle-board designed by committee, consisting of floor sweepings and a lot of toxic glue. Not surprisingly, since it’s not a proper system, few OpenStack deployments exceed a dozen nodes. And in this, the world falls all over itself to “invest” billions of dollars. Finest description of OpenStack I've seen.
- switch007 12y ago
  (Open question) Is OpenStack that bad? I've heard it requires significant integration work (i.e. full time dev(s)), far from being an out-of-the-box product. What is the 'toxic glue'? Why (if true) do many deployments not exceed 12 nodes?
  - alrs 12y ago
    I spent 18 months deploying Openstack inside a pretty broken huge company. Openstack is a disaster, because so many of the people building it have never used AWS and are instead trying to build "VMWare, but for free." Object storage is such an afterthought that there are regular rumblings that Swift shouldn't even be part of core Openstack. The six-month release cadence keeps delivering broken software. The releases are slushy enough that configuration options change mid-release, so you can't perform minor upgrades without potentially breaking something. The big companies backing Openstack are using it as a cloud story that they can present to Wall Street, or as a bargaining chip to get better terms from VMWare. Most of the Openstack startups have been aqui-hired, and life has moved on.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
  - alrs 12y ago
    A semi-dated but bang-on description of the problems behind Openstack written by Andrew Clay Shafer in 2013: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8817534 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8817534
  - deleted 12y ago
hardwaresofton 12y ago
I'm glad I got the chance to read this article. As a relative newcomer to computing (and I'd like to assert that just about 90% of HN are relative newcomers), I value the input of an old fogey "telling it like it is" (how he thinks it is, more accurately). I don't do much systems programming, but mean to do more, and I'm a little disappointed that what I thought was a good approach at a systems language (golang) is met with such derision by him (who seems to truly have systems experience), but I'm excited to read some of his more technical articles and find why that is the case. While I take his opinions (as that's what they are) with salt, I think he's definitely got a point saying that the industry has become cozy/complacent. Many of the interesting things that everyone is re-discovering/clamouring about today has been around since the 50s/60s/70s -- I can never shake the feeling that I can never shake the feeling that I could be doing something more ambitious, more revolutionary on pretty much every project I work on, but maybe that's just me.
- enneff 12y ago
  A big mistake for a newcomer to any field is to put too much stock into people's opinions, particularly those that are put disrespectfully. It's a common technique among the programming crowd to vocally disparage other people to make yourself seem smarter than you are. This article is one of those.
  - hardwaresofton 12y ago
    Definitely true, but for someone to be this mournful about the state of the industry is usually indicative of at least a LITTLE problem. I'm acutely aware that it's his personal opinion, I am aware of the pitfalls of bashing-culture (I've fallen into it many times when looking at legacy code), and I didn't uninstall linux and switch to illumos. In this case, I think he has a point (though he states it pretty extremely). At the very least, it's refreshing to read an article every once in a while that isn't simply praising the established platforms of today, or pointing out a small shortcoming (usually that the author fixed and decided to make a blogpost about). I'm currently reading his golang post to see why he thinks this way and if he makes any solid points there that sit well with me, but I value the dissent to popular zeitgeist (not so much how disrespectful he was about it).
deirdres 12y ago
For those wondering "Who is this guy?" - you can look up his engineering qualifications and contributions elsewhere. My experience of him personally, in two years spent looking across our desks at each other, is that he has intelligence, integrity, and empathy equal to few in this industry. His retirement is a great loss to tech. As a friend, I wish him well in whatever he wants to do in his life.
- justin66 12y ago
  If true, it's perhaps a bit sad that he's so willingly gone out - with this blog post, and the one about Go - in a way that paints himself as a total asshole. It's all most of us will ever have had in the way of contact with him.

97 points by ABS 12y ago

runin2k1 12y ago

Wrong author -- See Keith M Wesolowski

ABS 12y ago
fixed, thanks
- bcantrill 12y ago
  Phew -- thank you! (And it's "Keith Wesolowski", for whatever it's worth.) Personally, I would title this "A young software engineer retires", but I'm 0-for-1 on HN titles today.[1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8816101 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8816101
  - ABS 12y ago
    and fixed again, looks like I'm unable to write in an input box today... regarding the title: what you said :-)
  - mwcampbell 12y ago
    I, for one, like your proposed title. It captures a salient fact about the author which makes a big difference in how one views the post.

joshbaptiste 12y ago

The net result of all this is that we have data centres occupying many hectares, filled with computers that are architecturally identical to a Packard Bell 486 desktop running MS-DOS long enough to boot a crippled and amateurish clone of Unix circa 1987, and an endless array of complex, kludged-up hardware and software components intended to hide all of that. I would ask for a show of hands from those who consider this progress, but too many are happily riding the gravy train this abomination enables. Woah.. that statement stung, mostly because I agree with it and realize that I'm one of the people that he refers to in his post.

trhway 12y ago
>data centres occupying many hectares, filled with computers that are architecturally identical to a Packard Bell 486 desktop running MS-DOS long enough to boot a crippled and amateurish clone of Unix circa 1987, and an endless array of complex, kludged-up hardware and software components intended to hide all of that. I would ask for a show of hands from those who consider this progress, that's definitely a huge progress. Successfully building a coherent computer size of many hectares out of commodity components... And that it doesn't matter whether it is 486 desktop or something else is among the great of achievements of today. Keith and the likes are stuck in the past when the content/architecture of that single box was important and thus they (and all their ecosystem) have been limited physically and mentally by a biggest box one can build (like SunFire 10K). Network is the computer - Keith's and my common former employer was saying. While may be not there yet, today we already have "AWS is the computer", "private FB datacenters is the computer", etc...
- otterley 12y ago
  Not everything Sun made was big iron; even their small soldiers (Netra, SunBlade etc) used many of the same technologies (Open Boot PROM, etc.) that made their big-iron great. And their hardware and software documentation was second to none. A network of good boxes is still better than a network of IBM BIOS-booting junk with weak telemetry, non-ECC RAM, and hastily engineered I/O controllers.
  - trhway 12y ago
    >A network of good boxes is still better than a network of IBM BIOS-booting junk with weak telemetry, non-ECC RAM, and hastily engineered I/O controllers. in a magic world of unlimited resources - yes. Unfortunately, engineering is a discipline dealing with constraints. Sun failed to get that. 20 boxes of that "junk" for the same amount of money as 1 "good" box - tough choice, isn't it? :) And by the way, wrt. "good" vs "junk", 10 years ago Sun hardware, like motherboards, layout, soldiering, its architecture/buses was already worse/behind than commodity x86/64 stuff produced by second rate Taiwan manufacturers. >Not everything Sun made was big iron; even their small soldiers (Netra, SunBlade etc) used many of the same technologies (Open Boot PROM, etc.) that made their big-iron great. that is kind of at the root of the problem - even smaller stuff was as result priced toward big iron, i.e. bad price/performance.

Flow 12y ago

I wonder what work/research would satisfy his need for "the next thing" / "the right way"? Maybe working with Alan Kay and the Viewpoint Institute? Or would he perhaps consider what they are trying to accomplish navel-gazing?

_delirium 12y ago
The "Dogpatch" proposal he co-wrote/linked suggests some directions he seems to think would be promising: http://us-east.manta.joyent.com/wesolows/public/dogpatch.pdf http://us-east.manta.joyent.com/wesolows/public/dogpatch.pdf
- bronson 12y ago
  Hooooly cow. Surprising that comes from a guy who claims to hate second system syndrome so much.

mwcampbell 12y ago

One of his central criticisms is that the software stack is ossifying upward. Yet when a project tried to simplify a layer of the stack, as Go did with its toolchain, he criticized it for being NIH. I guess the problem is that everyone has their own pet concern which they will vehemently defend (one of mine is accessibility in GUI toolkits), and thus things will never get simpler, at least in mainstream systems that are more or less designed by committee. Regarding UEFI, I wonder if Joyent has enough clout that it could push the relevant suppliers to support coreboot. Edit: I guess the answer is no, since they couldn't interest anyone in Dogpatch. From a Sun/Illumos aficionado's perspective, has GNU/Linux always been amateur, or is that more recent, e.g. with the intrusion of D-Bus and systemd into servers?

bcantrill 12y ago
Assuming the last question is earnest: while I think "amateur" is a tad strong, I do think that Linux suffers enormously from NIH; it remains the first system (or first Unix system, anyway) for many of its contributors, who seem to know no other way -- and this shows up all over the system.[1] In terms of how this has changed over time: if anything, it used to be much, much worse. For example, Linus' attitude on kernel debugging circa 2000[2] is not merely amateurish, and not merely irresponsible, but actively dangerous. While his attitudes have soften over the years, there still remain striking differences of engineering principle between Linux and other systems -- of which systemd is merely (in my opinion) one particularly egregious manifestation. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrfD3pC0VSs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrfD3pC0VSs [2] https://lkml.org/lkml/2000/9/6/65 https://lkml.org/lkml/2000/9/6/65
- stefantalpalaru 12y ago
  Don't blame the systemd wart on Linux - it's user level madness that can abuse any kernel, even your precious illumos ;-)
  - BrainInAJar 12y ago
    an operating system comprises more than just a kernel.

stefantalpalaru 12y ago

> GNU/Linux is definitely not the place to look for exciting OS work. Then why did Joyent port KVM from Linux to Illumos? https://github.com/joyent/illumos-kvm https://github.com/joyent/illumos-kvm

chronid 12y ago
They could have the need to create Linux VMs, and that was the best way to do that. It does not mean porting KVM is "exciting OS work", though. Even the actual craze around linux containers technology sometimes baffles me. Zones/Jails have existed, for like... Forever.
- xorcist 12y ago
  The first Linux container implementation to my knowledge was linux-vserver, which shipped in 1998. Solaris Zones shipped in 2004. So, yeah, like... forever.
  - chronid 12y ago
    VServer and Jails/Zones are not really the same thing, IIRC, and 1.0 was around 2004 too anyway, while still not offering equivalent functionality. If I remember incorrectly, I stand corrected on the timeline! I've got no problem with that. But my point remains: even containers are "old" news, while speaking of "exciting OS things".
- bcantrill 12y ago
  It was actually pretty interesting -- terrifying, even.[1][2] Not that I disagree with your assertion about zones, of course -- and note that we are (very) actively working on a Linux compatibility layer for illumos zones.[3] [1] http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2011/08/15/kvm-on-illumos/ http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2011/08/15/kvm-on-illumos/ [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_Ye89cDmKU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_Ye89cDmKU [3] http://www.slideshare.net/bcantrill/illumos-lx http://www.slideshare.net/bcantrill/illumos-lx

vezzy-fnord 12y ago

The author is rather inconsistent here. On one hand, he's opposed to the contemporary Desktop Linux philosophy which tries to poorly imitate the monolithic stacks of OS X and Windows, but he also brutally lambasts the innovations behind Plan 9, as apparently for all of his derision towards modern computing, he finds starting from first principles to be anathema for whatever reason. His proposed solution is not given, but it's hinted towards Solaris/illumos. So... a System V Unix. A well designed and modern SysV Unix with facilities that other Unices haven't implemented as well, that is certain, but his complaint that our hardware and software is stuck in old decades is ironic as a result.

BrainInAJar 12y ago
it is possible to agree with the general tone of an article while still disagreeing with some of the finer points.

jfe 12y ago

I may be a bit biased -- the Bell Labs guys are major influences of mine -- but I think the criticism of Pike, et. al is unfair. I understood Pike's "systems research is irrelevant" presentation to be a tongue-in-cheek observation about the decline of systems research, not a statement that "OS research is dead" and we shouldn't work on it, but maybe I'm mistaken. I don't consider Plan9 to be a failure, at least in the engineering sense. Many ideas pioneered in Plan9 influenced developments in the Linux kernel. It actually seems contradictory to me that Keith spends so much time flaming the community for not trying something new, then berates researchers like Pike for doing exactly that.

mwcampbell 12y ago

Thinking about this some more, I suppose the take-away for software engineers who don't want to retire young is this: Kill any sense of aesthetics you may have; always back the platform or technology that appears to be winning, regardless of what you feel its merits are; never hope for the underdog to win; worse is better; either be a mercenary, or look for ways to do some good within the broken system without trying to fix the parts you can't change. Is that too negative a conclusion?

sanderjd 12y ago
I find screeds from engineers about how broken everything is to be directly at odds with the observable truth of vastly more people with less technical expertise having vastly more access to technology that provides them value. I think the take-away is to get some perspective and stop caring so much about the state of "the system" and just try to create things that are valuable to people.
- digi_owl 12y ago
  Seems to boil down to the age old "perfect is the enemy of good", with said engineers aiming for perfection while seeing (mere) good triumph.
  - sanderjd 12y ago
    Ah, yeah, spot on. That's exactly what it is, and I've always related to that expression.
toyg 12y ago
That's a cynical view of the workplace that you could easily generalise to any institution or marketplace. The good guys never win, it's all about kissing a$$, sell anything that's profitable, milk it until it's dry, etc etc. No market is perfect, and the IT market even less so, dominated as it is by a handful of US companies riding an Asian supply chain fundamentally incapable of (or unwilling to) creative disruption. But it's still more dynamic and open to innovative players than the car market or almost any other market you could mention. The parable of Apple alone should be taken as proof that "it can be done"... Just because some segments seem to be more conservative than others, it doesn't mean the whole sector is doomed; it's just a sign of consolidation in an industry that is barely 50-year old and still very much wild compared to any other sector out there.

YuriNiyazov 12y ago

Who is this guy? I was under the impression this was the author of dtrace due to the domain name. That seems wrong, he's not listed as a dtrace author on wikipedia.

raspasov 12y ago

Maybe this will be interesting to the author, a complete re-think of computers starting from the hardware level by HP Labs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPQ1AheNro8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPQ1AheNro8

khc 12y ago

> I’m not going to do the thing where I try to name everyone > I’ve enjoyed working with, or even everyone who has helped > me out over the years. As someone who've worked with Keith for a few months, I am going ahead and say that he's definitely someone enjoyed working with. Opinionated, yes. Very smart? Also yes.

bronson 12y ago

Meanwhile, everyone wants to rave about OpenStack, a software particle-board designed by committee, consisting of floor sweepings and a lot of toxic glue. Not surprisingly, since it’s not a proper system, few OpenStack deployments exceed a dozen nodes. And in this, the world falls all over itself to “invest” billions of dollars. Finest description of OpenStack I've seen.

switch007 12y ago
(Open question) Is OpenStack that bad? I've heard it requires significant integration work (i.e. full time dev(s)), far from being an out-of-the-box product. What is the 'toxic glue'? Why (if true) do many deployments not exceed 12 nodes?
- alrs 12y ago
  I spent 18 months deploying Openstack inside a pretty broken huge company. Openstack is a disaster, because so many of the people building it have never used AWS and are instead trying to build "VMWare, but for free." Object storage is such an afterthought that there are regular rumblings that Swift shouldn't even be part of core Openstack. The six-month release cadence keeps delivering broken software. The releases are slushy enough that configuration options change mid-release, so you can't perform minor upgrades without potentially breaking something. The big companies backing Openstack are using it as a cloud story that they can present to Wall Street, or as a bargaining chip to get better terms from VMWare. Most of the Openstack startups have been aqui-hired, and life has moved on.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
- alrs 12y ago
  A semi-dated but bang-on description of the problems behind Openstack written by Andrew Clay Shafer in 2013: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8817534 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8817534
- deleted 12y ago

hardwaresofton 12y ago

I'm glad I got the chance to read this article. As a relative newcomer to computing (and I'd like to assert that just about 90% of HN are relative newcomers), I value the input of an old fogey "telling it like it is" (how he thinks it is, more accurately). I don't do much systems programming, but mean to do more, and I'm a little disappointed that what I thought was a good approach at a systems language (golang) is met with such derision by him (who seems to truly have systems experience), but I'm excited to read some of his more technical articles and find why that is the case. While I take his opinions (as that's what they are) with salt, I think he's definitely got a point saying that the industry has become cozy/complacent. Many of the interesting things that everyone is re-discovering/clamouring about today has been around since the 50s/60s/70s -- I can never shake the feeling that I can never shake the feeling that I could be doing something more ambitious, more revolutionary on pretty much every project I work on, but maybe that's just me.

enneff 12y ago
A big mistake for a newcomer to any field is to put too much stock into people's opinions, particularly those that are put disrespectfully. It's a common technique among the programming crowd to vocally disparage other people to make yourself seem smarter than you are. This article is one of those.
- hardwaresofton 12y ago
  Definitely true, but for someone to be this mournful about the state of the industry is usually indicative of at least a LITTLE problem. I'm acutely aware that it's his personal opinion, I am aware of the pitfalls of bashing-culture (I've fallen into it many times when looking at legacy code), and I didn't uninstall linux and switch to illumos. In this case, I think he has a point (though he states it pretty extremely). At the very least, it's refreshing to read an article every once in a while that isn't simply praising the established platforms of today, or pointing out a small shortcoming (usually that the author fixed and decided to make a blogpost about). I'm currently reading his golang post to see why he thinks this way and if he makes any solid points there that sit well with me, but I value the dissent to popular zeitgeist (not so much how disrespectful he was about it).

deirdres 12y ago

For those wondering "Who is this guy?" - you can look up his engineering qualifications and contributions elsewhere. My experience of him personally, in two years spent looking across our desks at each other, is that he has intelligence, integrity, and empathy equal to few in this industry. His retirement is a great loss to tech. As a friend, I wish him well in whatever he wants to do in his life.

justin66 12y ago
If true, it's perhaps a bit sad that he's so willingly gone out - with this blog post, and the one about Go - in a way that paints himself as a total asshole. It's all most of us will ever have had in the way of contact with him.