Slashdot Mirror

http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/tpop/ - Kernighan is the Kernighan from K & R. I doubt Kernighan would co-author a book with an amateur ...

Here is his bio - http://herpolhode.com/rob/ . I doubt you'd be hiring a bad programmer.

publish another brain-dead academic paper on spoofing?

This is another example of ( to quote Rob Pike ) irrelevant systems software research.

Yours In Akademgorodok,
Kilgore Trout.

The recurrent cry of "we need more technology in the classroom" is nothing more than a panacea for all things labeled education. Instead of focusing on educational issues, technology is a convenient place to thrown money and "address" the problem. A computer does not make you smarter, does not make you more job worthy, does not make you a better problem solver. It is just a big lump of junk unless someone can teach you how to use it as a tool. Few presently can. Instead, the fact that young people "use" their computers makes educators feel like they are making big progress.

What do young people do with their computers? Read Systems Software is Irrelevant by Rob Pike. Written in 2000 and somewhat dated, the "Grandma" effect is still clear. People, read young people, typically use computers for three things: networking (blogs, web pages, chat, twitter, ...), entertainment (music, videos, games) and maybe, MAYBE, word processing.

I teach introductory computer science and encourage students to bring their laptops. For the small percentage, it works great. Everyone else is off playing around. They may be "literate", but they are not better educated. They are, however, much more distracted. That is what computers have brought this generation

After reading the article, I do think he has a point to some degree. I've seen comments on here that refer to Unix as like the wheel - Linux is simply polishing an already near-perfect idea. This can't be further from the truth. Look at what the article said -- he was disappointed that Stallman chose to pursue an open source version of an OS that was already at the time recognized as being not only old, but flawed. Age isn't the issue - it's idiotic to toss out an idea simply because of age. But flaws and technical reasons are definitely a cause to reconsider things, such as Unix. It would have been nice if he had chosen to open up a more revolutionary idea and push the field ahead instead of stalling it somewhere in the early 1970s. This isn't a unique sentiment. Rob Pike said a similar thing a few years ago at a talk in Utah (http://herpolhode.com/rob/utah2000.pdf) where he lamented that the fixation on Linux/Unix was leading many people to have blinders restricting them to thinking about the world in a very limited, closed-minded way. Rob happens to come from Bell labs where the original Unix creators realized that more was possible than what the Unix model provided, and they created Plan9 and Inferno. The open source model, while good for code freedom, seems to breed more than anything an irrational devotion to specific technologies simply because implementations of them exist for free. Why are people unwilling to consider that there could be better ways to do something, and that Unix/Linux is not the pinnacle of perfection in operating systems and software? I use Linux every day and enjoy it, but wouldn't blink an eye if something better came along and Linux got tossed off my machine.

Lanier is up to something, but he's missing the point. In the 1960s and 70s came up Tenex, Unix, the Smalltalk system, the Lisp Machine, the MESA system, full systems built from scratch.

Today, most of the software people, be it in Academia, in Industry or in the Free Software community, are designing building blocks -- pieces of software that are designed to fit within an existing system (Unix, Windows, the web, whatever).

Or, as Rob Pike put it, systems research is irrelevant (PDF).

I've been reading slashdot for a long time. Probably since the days when I had to recompile a kernel to watch a DVD or burn a CD on "desktop ready" Linux. Everytime the Microsoft/Linux/Mac argument comes up I reread this paper prepared by Rob Pike and I die a little inside: http://herpolhode.com/rob/utah2000.pdf Also you might want to check out this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem These threads are the MySpace of constructive criticism.

Systems Software Research Is Irrelevant. And you're getting the link from a guy who thinks he's invented a new type of IPC in operating systems and can't wait to 1) Make it into real research, or 2) Patent it because that gives me more money than publishing an academic paper would.

Just slightly bitter that the professor I emailed at a school couldn't tell me what exact storage her storage manager manages and I'm seeing a bleak future for myself in Computer Science but I haven't even gotten into undergrad university yet, but it's the field I love so fuck it all...

Oh, and most of the my sentences don't run on like that. You'll have to forgive the pre-career sour grapes.

You don't have to wait to work on this. I did a small toy OS as my final master project, called Managed Operating System, where the goal was to have a mostly safe kernel, allowing safe drivers. BTW, it could be usefull as previous work if MS asserts patents about this.

It's also quite sad that Systems Software Research is Irrelevant

Duh.

http://herpolhode.com/rob/

http://herpolhode.com/rob/rob.html

(Rob Pike is now at Google)

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=plan+9+pr oc+filesystem&btnG=Search

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs #Filesystems.2C_Files.2C_and_Names

GIYF

Duh.

http://herpolhode.com/rob/

http://herpolhode.com/rob/rob.html

(Rob Pike is now at Google)

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=plan+9+pr oc+filesystem&btnG=Search

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs #Filesystems.2C_Files.2C_and_Names

GIYF

I am genuine in my wish for your idea to blossom.

The pessimistic view in my circles is that the interesting is swamped.

This paper by Rob Pike is worth a read

Systems Software Research is Irrelevant
http://herpolhode.com/rob/utah2000.pdf

At the OS level, a decent scheduler and not using giant locking will get you most of the way.

To get the most out of it though, the applications need to be multi-threaded and multi-threaded programming in (standard) C/C++ is not straight forward, in fact it can be almost downright impossible to debug.

Other programming languages are much more suited to multi threaded programming, particularly those that use the CSP model.

Construction of Concurrent Systems Software
http://www.herpolhode.com/rob/lec1.pdf
http://www.herpolhode.com/rob/lec3.pdf
http://www.herpolhode.com/rob/lec5.pdf

My favourite, of course, is Limbo but I only know of one environment where that is implemented : Inferno

here's another discussion on a similar theme

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=164547&cid= 13736089

At the OS level, a decent scheduler and not using giant locking will get you most of the way.

To get the most out of it though, the applications need to be multi-threaded and multi-threaded programming in (standard) C/C++ is not straight forward, in fact it can be almost downright impossible to debug.

Other programming languages are much more suited to multi threaded programming, particularly those that use the CSP model.

Construction of Concurrent Systems Software
http://www.herpolhode.com/rob/lec1.pdf
http://www.herpolhode.com/rob/lec3.pdf
http://www.herpolhode.com/rob/lec5.pdf

My favourite, of course, is Limbo but I only know of one environment where that is implemented : Inferno

here's another discussion on a similar theme

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=164547&cid= 13736089

At the OS level, a decent scheduler and not using giant locking will get you most of the way.

To get the most out of it though, the applications need to be multi-threaded and multi-threaded programming in (standard) C/C++ is not straight forward, in fact it can be almost downright impossible to debug.

Other programming languages are much more suited to multi threaded programming, particularly those that use the CSP model.

Construction of Concurrent Systems Software
http://www.herpolhode.com/rob/lec1.pdf
http://www.herpolhode.com/rob/lec3.pdf
http://www.herpolhode.com/rob/lec5.pdf

My favourite, of course, is Limbo but I only know of one environment where that is implemented : Inferno

here's another discussion on a similar theme

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=164547&cid= 13736089

You are referring to Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (aka "utah2000"), but I think you miss the point, just because Unix being "good enough" killed all progress doesn't mean that it was a good thing, quite the contrary.

And BTW, Plan 9 has a Unix compatible subsystem called APE(A Posix Environment), but it is rarely used, because Unix is 30 years rotten shit, and all that was worthwhile keeping from Unix has been in Plan 9 from the start, all that others have added to Unix in the last 30 years have been hacks by people that never understood Unix and its philosophy.

The true Unix spirit is still alive and well, in Plan 9, but not in any of the bastard sons of Unix or its numerous clones.

Not only is UNIX dead, it's starting to smell really bad." Rob Pike - circa 1991

The inventors of Unix don't use it any more, isn't that enough for you people.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: The Unix Legacy (pdf)

Not only is UNIX dead, it's starting to smell really bad." Rob Pike - circa 1991

The inventors of Unix don't use it any more, isn't that enough for you people.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: The Unix Legacy (pdf)

With the migration to Intel the "Mac Tax" is more evident. This puts pressure on the geek market. Many of us would like to have a machine to run OS/X. That word "machine" is key. I'm not buying an Apple unless I can use another OS on it. My first preference is that it boot Windows as that is what I need at work and for home use. Next is Linux. So why would these new machines appeal to me? Outside of the mini the new ones will be too expensive for something just to play with.

Exactly. Most regular users don't know or care about operating systems and computers, so to them a Mac is something unique. A Mac to geek users, however, is now just a PC with OS X and a pretty case. I am under the "geek user " category. I love OS X (heck, I'd install Rhapsody on my PC if I had a Rhapsody disk), but I'm not going to shell out $$$ for new hardware that is exactly the same as what I currently have.

And to those Mac users who say that the point of a Mac is OS X, what if you're using OS X on your Dell or eMachines box (especially if the drivers work well)? Is that the Macintosh experience?

Finally, I still have some animosity toward Apple's switch to the x86 in general. Yes...IBM G5 sucks heat...Intel's laptop's chips are cooler...G4 sucks...users don't care...OS X is still shiny and snappy....blah blah blah, but I'm still disappointed with the switch. The x86 architecture sucks from a architectural standpoint compared to most of the other architectures out there, but I recommend that you read printed pages 10 and 16 of Rob Pike's Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (PDF warning). It best discusses the lack of diversity and innovation in hardware, in words better than I describe.

Right on. Read my post about an idea for a new OS, even though I don't think it is as radical of an idea as yours.

I would just like to see Rob Pike being proved wrong about his essay (PDF warning) made six years ago talking about the sorry state of operating systems research. There are a lot of good ideas out there, yet unfortunately we haven't seen make it past the drawing board. Imagine if more research was being performed on systems programming. Then we'll see all sorts of new and interesting operating systems and other ideas come out.

Well, at least Rob Pike, one of the Plan 9 developers (and, of course, of Unix fame), works at Google since he left Bell Labs. A network-centric OS like Plan 9 (or it's successor, Inferno) would probably be an ideal match for a Google infrastructure.

Rob Pike's Systems Software Research is Irrelevant seems to be on the topic.

% grep [Ss]tandard /sys/games/lib/fortunes
Multilevel standards are like onions. They're smelly and make you cry a lot. -Ron Natalie
That's the nice thing about standards -- there's so many to choose from. -trb
This is a full standard Kernighan & Ritchie C compiler.
We don't need a standard; Kernighan & Ritchie completely defines the language.
Is there no room for competition in the standards industry? -R. Hardin
X is a temporary standard, like FORTRAN. - Andries van Dam
Happiness is just gymnastics--and I hate programs that read standard output. -Boyd
Oh! It's one of those programs that reads standard output. - boyd
Geez, you'd think standards were a continental disease or something. - Brian Reid
No UNIX system on the market supports more standards than DEC OSF/1.
Standards is an area that is constantly changing. -Carl Cargill (ed. ACM StandardView)
If there was [sic] a single standard for the English language it would not be necessary to support redundant spellings. - OSF1 ls(1) man page
First off, I'd suggest printing out a copy of the GNU coding standards, and NOT read it. Burn them, it's a great symbolic gesture. - Linus Torvalds
gcc -Isomenonstandardplace -Dverylongoption -Wpleasedontcomplainaboutmyprogramiknowhatimdoing ilikethingstobeclearsoigivemyfileslongnames.c
/us r/include/c++/3.2/backward/backward_warning.h:32:2 : warning: #warning This file includes at least one deprecated or antiquated header. Please consider using one of the 32 headers found in section 17.4.1.2 of the C++ standard. Examples include substituting the <X> header for the <X.h> header for C++ includes, or <sstream> instead of the deprecated header <strstream.h>. To disable this warning use -Wno-deprecated.
We lead by following standards. - sape