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Linux: Linus Says, Linux Not Designed; It Never Was
- hxa7241 17y agoNatural evolution is best? One word: wheel . . . Linux as a whole was not designed -- that is easy to accept, and also that it is a strength. However, design is not so entirely opposed to evolution as might be inferred. Design seems essentially to have some iterative character too. It always entails a some series of ideas, rejections, and then further adjusted ideas. That is deliberately controlled, but it still has variation and selection -- so the possibility of blending between design and evolution is very reasonable. And given the wheel example, artificial design has something to offer too. (I think Torvalds' view is consonant with this. -- I mean, is he not overall offering some combination of evolution and design?)
- bad_user 17y agoYour wheel example is not good. Before wheels, I'm pretty sure people used tree trunks to drag heavy objects from A to B. And I'm pretty sure the wheel's inventor hasn't envisioned the average consumer car we have today either. Linus's point is that design happens at a micro-level, but at a macroscopic level the direction of a successful project should be made by trial and error with a feedback cycle. To put things in perspective ... Linux is not designed for servers, it is not designed for desktops, it is not designed for real-time systems, it is not designed for mobile phones. When people wanted to use Linux for such stuff, they took it and modified it to their will, and the parts that slowed them down were eventually removed / refactored. That's actually very true if you look at the history of many successful projects. And that's evolution more than design. "Release early and often" is exactly about this.
- hxa7241 17y ago> Your wheel example is not good. Well, no it isn't too good. But it does basically fit: It is a small feature of larger systems, as you describe, and it has been done better by artificial design.
- gatormax 17y agoHmmm... idea: design at the micro-level = hypothesis formulation direction of successful project at macroscopic level = repeated testing and reformulation of hypothesis in other words, project success is science well applied
- Tuna-Fish 17y ago> Natural evolution is best? One word: wheel . . . http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel_spider http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheel_spider http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoop_snake http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoop_snake Evolution got there repeatedly. Legs just work better cross-country, and there didn't use to be much roads around.
- dstorrs 17y agoNot challenging your point, just curious...do you know of any (non-human) animals that have harnessed fire? I don't mean in an "environmental" way, like looking for food along the edges of a burn, or having IR-sensitive vision, I mean actually collecting it, containing it, using it as a tool. Or is that a uniquely human trait?
- btilly 17y agoTo the best of my knowledge that is a uniquely human trait. And we not only harness it - we are dependent on it. Over time our digestive systems have adapted to require cooked food. (Every known culture cooks food. Theoretically you can live on uncooked food. However the few who try it have to eat constantly and tend to be skinny...)
- jacquesm 17y agoWhat's wrong with being skinny ? I can see the point of not having to eat constantly, but if skinny is one end of the spectrum and overweight is the other I'd rather be skinny.
- rosser 17y agoAs a skinny fellow, I tend to agree -- or, rather, my metabolism agrees for me. Counter-point, though: consider the "obesity paradox". Statistically, obesity correlates massively more positively with survival in the face of catastrophic illness (cancer, &c) than for folks with a normal-ish BMI, let alone the scrawny ones. It's probably a less "selective" (in the evolutionary sense) trait than it might be, in that cancer tends to be an ailment associated with at least somewhat advanced age, a time by which most people who are going to will likely have bred.
- billswift 17y agoOf course natural is best. That's why peregrine falcons are faster than F-16 Falcons.
- tybris 17y agoWheels are quite unpractical. Their only advantage is that they require relatively little energy over long distances. However, why not reduce the need for long distances or not create it in the first place?
- hxa7241 17y agoPostscriptum: Saying "wheel!" is crude and invites a simple counter. But the point is there is a simple, important thing where artifice has a substantial lead. And without well-chosen application of design, the large-scale evolution might be practically excluded from certain areas. (. . . that was really a side issue. It was the procedural similarity of design and evolution -- they are not so much opposed, as differently balanced.)
- robin_reala 17y agoProbably worth pointing out that this article is from 2002.
- mynameishere 17y agoJust a meta-question here: Is pointing out the date of something worth 25 upmods? I mean, when so-and-so got to the forum and saw that... Probably worth pointing out that this article is from 2002. ...was only upmodded 24 times, did he say to himself: Only Twenty-Four upmods? This deeply insightful bit of time-tellery is worth Twenty-Five if it's worth a farthing! I shall upmod at once!
- s3b 17y agoYou're reading too much into it. The points just indicate that around 25 people didn't realize the article was from 2002 until they read the comment so they upmodded
- messel 17y agoI probably didn't deserve a 104 points for finding it, but it's like who's line is it anyway. The points don't matter, what matters is that you guys enjoyed the read.
- shachaf 17y agoI like to think that people vote on a comment based on the content, not on the (current) score. It is not particularly unlikely that twenty-four people thought: This is a worthwhile comment! It points out something that I did not realize, and change the meaning of the article to a degree. I may as well vote on it, that it may move upward in the list and other people read it earlier than other comments. Also remember that +1 isn't specified to be "Insightful" or "Informative" like Slashdot; nor can you vote a "half-good" comment up a half-point. Instead, to achieve the same effect, a half-good comment must appeal to half as many people. This comment happened to appeal, on its own merits, to twenty-four people. (Does this mean that the highest-voted comments might be the ones that appeal to the biggest percentage of the site, rather than the ones of the highest quality? Hmm. Does that mean that for the voting system to work well, a good percentage of users must specifically only vote comments that are very good?)
- diN0bot 17y agoreminds me of yesterday's font page submission on poor use of analogies. not saying it is, but i can't help seeing the connection...oh god! may this is a bad analogy. will it never end!!
- Herring 17y agoSounds interesting. Link? Not that we really need to analyze it. Theres 50 reasons why this is a bad analogy.
- pohl 17y agoIt's interesting that Linus believes that Linux is the most widely deployed Unix. I would have guessed that MacOS X might have surpassed it by now. Edit: Oops...this is from 2001
- yan 17y agoWell, firstly that post was written eight years ago. Secondly, OS X might surpass it on Desktops, but what about servers, computing clusters and so on?
- mbrubeck 17y agoNot to mention phones, TiVos, netbooks, routers, Kindles, NAS devices...
- pohl 17y agoYeah, I missed the date. He didn't need to pile on the caveats and squint to make it true back then.
- gloob 17y agoIf "servers and embedded devices" are a "caveat" to you, I'm intrigued about the world you live in.
- pohl 17y agoI'm not here to spar. I was just using the generally accepted definition of the term. Defining a specific market segment is, by nature, adding a condition or limitation that adds some necessary context for certain statements: Nature Valley Peanut Butter Granola Bars are the most widely deployed snack...in my cubicle.
- messel 17y agoPretty fantastic look into how Linus see's technology design, versus evolutionary engineering. F'ing awesome. Linus' outlook on optimal engineering reminds me of Kevin Kelly's swarm and emergence writings.
- blasdel 17y agoDon't tar Linus' acerbic pragmatism with KK's technobabble idealism.
- teeja 17y agoThat which works well beats that which looks good. Take quantum for example: When Dirac was asked, "What’s the answer to the measurement problem?" his response was, Quantum mechanics is a provisional theory.
- RyanMcGreal 17y agoOne of the things I respect about Linus is that he's such a gifted troll. :)
- btilly 17y agoIt is interesting to read this and compare with Worse is Better: http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html http://www.jwz.org/doc/worse-is-better.html Note that all of the ways the worse, less designed solution (Unix, C), are better boil down to being better from an adaptation/colonization/survival perspective. In other words the rise of Unix/C is computer evolution in action. Linus just recognizes that that applies to Linux as well.
- ivenkys 17y agoAbsolutely , that was the first thing that came to my mind - this is <i>Worse is Better</i> and taking a further leap its a result of <i>Release Early and Release Often</i>.
- chickamade 17y agoWorse is better is a conscious design choice. Unix/C follow that philosophy but does not mean they are "less designed", but simpler designed. > Simplicity is the most important consideration in a design.
- joss82 17y agoThe first Linus comment on that page is the best comment post I have ever read. It make so much sense ! I can see clearly now !
- rudin 17y agoLinus: "Quite frankly, Sun is doomed. And it has nothing to do with their engineering practices or their coding style." This was in 2001. How does one get such prophetic skills.
- dmoney 17y agoEverything is doomed if you wait long enough.
- fauigerzigerk 17y agoThat's exactly right. On top of that Sun had just lost 80% of its market capitalisation and there was a general sense of doom in the tech industry back then.
- rythie 17y agoI think it was clear even back then sun was the dot in .com and then after the crash everyone started using Linux instead.
- jacquesm 17y agoThe Designers of UNIX are called Ritchie and Thompson. Linux is a re-implementation of that design.
- Confusion 17y agoThis quote by Linus applies: But that's like saying that you know that you're going to build a car with four wheels and headlights - it's true, but the real bitch is in the details.
- jacquesm 17y agoGo read an old unix source and tell me if you think it's just the four wheels and the headlights that were common. Sure there are details, lots of them. Many of those were copied. And linux didn't even get all of them right, even copying is hard work. So it's an evolution of the original design. Especially now, two decades later.
- Hexstream 17y agoThis surprised me: "Take TCP for example. The TCP protocol is specified in a series of documents. If you make a formally correct implementation of the base TCP RFC you won't even make connections. Much of the flow control behaviour, the queueing and the detail is learned only by being directly part of the TCP implementing community. You can read all the scientific papers you like, it will not make you a good TCP implementor." - Alan Cox
- tigerthink 17y agoEvolution isn't that impressive. Humans could build human-level AIs if we had millions of years too.