Did that strike anyone else as unbelievably bizarre? I mean, am I supposed to say "Oooh! I better catch that one, it's a rare public appearance by Kurt Gray? WOW!
I found the reviewer's bias toward languages with built-in garbage collection a little annoying. For some projects it's appropriate to use a language with garbage collection (web scripts), and sometimes it's not (operating systems). While he may be "amused" by the need for manual deallocation of memory, he should understand that it's generally far more efficient.
Unfortunately, I think the reviewer doesn't have much experience with low-level system programming to understand these trade-offs. Until he does, he should resist making judgements.
I hope that translated right... Slashdot "Plain Old Text" option is a little broken, so I had to do some HTML translation. Oh well, it gives you the flavor of the IOCCC, anyway.
As for drivers, well, I've never cared all that much about multimaedia stuff. As long as I have a semiadequate video card (my s3_virge is fine for me) and a semiadequate sound card, I'm happy enough. I suspect that most of the people using HURD won't be terribly interested in this sort of thing either.
Come on. How about network cards? Wanna run HURD on your laptop (Those are solid wacky drivers). PCMCIA support? How about wireless comms? How about USB support? Scanners? Cameras?ISDN? Tape drives? Good god, how about 3D card support for decent game of Quake? Or of lesser importance, CAD?
Don't make the mistake of judging the needs of others by your own (rather boring) needs (I mean, a Virge? Yuck).
Maybe so, but if everyone thought that way, there wouldn't be any new operating systems and we'd be stuck with backwards-compatible pieces of garbage.
Exactly correct: How did Windows get to be the most popular OS in the world? DOS compatibility, baby. They gave people an upgrade path, and even now, people want their DOS apps to work. Heck, I even run a DOS app every now and then (the "Sherlock" game rules! The newer Windows version blows). In fact, my father-in-law still uses a DOS program to store his golf games.
Say what you want about Microsoft, but that's the one thing they have understood better than anyone else: "he who is most compatible wins". Does it prevent a lot of progress taking place? You bet; that's probably the #1 reason Windows is as unstable as it is. They can't implement strong memory protection a la NT without breaking a lot of applications. But guess what? Consumers would rather have their application investment continue to work than not have a "backwards-compatible piece of garbage".
Well, I won't argue that there is a lot in Motif that is brain damaged (just how long it took to plug all the memory leaks is evidence enough). I guess my sympathy switched over to the Motif maintainers when I spent too many hours trying to get some particular Xt function to work.
I mean, I've been there, where I've had to write stuff in the main event loop to intercept certain events, in order to implement my own function to fix something in Xt that simply didn't work reliably.
It just seems to me that it ought to be possible to have an Xt-like system that encapsulates the Widget concept, but is not so hugely complex and is much more reliable.
I will defend Jaime a bit on this point... it's not that hard to figure out where a function lies if you understand how the heirarchy works:
X11: Any sort of low-level drawing primitives
Xt: General operations on Widgets (creation, destruction, etc)
Motif: Particular operations on the Motif Widget set
I think the design and goals of this were pretty good, but as I said in another thread, I have big problems with the implementation. Unfortunately, Motif had to break a lot of this abstraction to implement some of its features.
People DO say that about Linux, and it keeps many of them from it. Compatibility was what killed OS/2 (not marketing, by the way).
A new platform rises when it solves problems that the old platform does not, and it does not make the transition too painful. Linux has risen on the server side because it provides solutions better than NT in a lot of areas. You'll note that Linux so far is a miserable failure for the client-side desktop, because of the lack of applications (read: compatibility). OS/2 was far and away technically superior to Win 3.1, but IBM couldn't give it away (they sold machines with both, and people deleted it in favor of 3.1). Again, compatibility rules.
Hurd might have some advantages, but if they aren't huge advantages, not many is going to spend the effort to port applications, device drivers, etc away from Linux when Linux works well enough. Or at the very least, Hurd becomes a second class citizen waiting for a vendor to take pity (Sound familiar OS/2 and Mac users?)
In fact, this is a good lesson for many Linux advocates. On the one hand, advocates decry people choosing the "technically inferior" Windows platform, yet we see the same processes at work that keep people on the "technically inferior" Linux rather than switching to Hurd.
It's all about the applications and getting work done. The OS is just not that big a factor in how people choose platforms.
If the Hurd guys are smart, the will put in a Linux compability layer everywhere that's required and makes porting a simple matter of copying binaries.
Actually, I'm somewhat surprised at his position considering how slow and unreliable Netscape is under X. Of course, that may not be Xt's fault, but I'm assuming he has Xt/Motif experience beyond just Netscape.
Writing widgets is insanely overcomplicated, and the execution is slow.
Resource files were buggy and inconsistent
Motif broke the object model because it had to break it in order get things to work (otherwise why would they bother to break it?)
Keyboard shortcut processing was broken (which was why Motif had to do its own thing)
Focus handling was unreliable and broken (Quick... how do I set the focus to a particular Window? How do I raise a Window? Sorry -- XtSetKeyboardFocus doesn't work!)
That's all I can remember right now; it's been a few years. I lived with Xt/Motif for about 7 years in developing a major hospital application (A Labor and Delivery monitoring and information system called WatchChild). I don't have an exact count of how many bugs and limitations I've coded around in Xt, but it's a lot.
I'll accept that you truthfully didn't have a problem with it with your particular apps. And I should say that it's not all bad; it does have some good concepts and a lot of the design is correct. The problem is that they either a) didn't go far enough to make a feature useful, or b) screwed up the implementation of the feature.
But all I can tell you is that in my experience, it is just a bad piece of software than needs to be replaced by cleaner APIs.
The problem is really with Xt, which is the low-level "Widget" interface to X11. It is a slow, buggy, complete pile of garbage. I honestly feel sorry for the Motif guys, because they really wanted to use the "standard" Xt interface. As it stands, they had to write a lot of Xt-incompatible stuff for Motif to work right (keyboard shortcuts come to mind), but there's just no getting around the fact that Xt sucks huge.
I wish that they had had the good sense to just punt Xt and either rewrite it, or come up with something new. Unfortunately, they didn't.
As someone who developed a major hospital information system using Motif/Xt, I hope that piece of garbage goes to the fiery depths of hell it deserves.
But let me not pull punches, and tell you what I really think. The problem isn't really with Motif, it's with Xt, which is a slow, buggy, slow, hard to understand, slow, inflexible, slow piece of poop. I am totally convinced that it's Xt that has held back applications from being ported to Unix. I think Motif wanted to be a better package, but it was held back by having to work within the straight-jacket of Xt.
On the other hand, X11 (the low-level protocol) is actually pretty good. If we could get some decent font handling, it could be very good. The only problem with X11 is that you really have to understand how it works in order to be efficient over the network connection, but on balance, it's a very well-designed protocol.
As for "ring around the sun" stories, it may sound rung to death but we haven't even started on the variations of this theme.
That's true, but will a SF author "reuse" a plot device like the Ringworld when it's already "been done" by Larry Niven?
To tell you the truth, I wish they would. Ringworld was a pretty bad novel from a plot and character point of view, but the themes were so fascinating that it made up for them. I wouldn't be opposed at all to seeing other authors pick up these themes are try fresh plots but with the same device. There are innumerable interesting stories that could be told about different reasons a ringworld would be built, and different societies that would come out of it.
The question is, would the author get slaughtered for "unoriginality" or "ripping off" Larry Niven? One would hope not, since zillions of authors have ripped off themes from Shakespeare, but often the variations on the same theme can bring a freshness to the material.
Also, for some reason, fantasy has been exploding while SF has been declining. I'm not a huge fantasy fan, so this has been really depressing for me.
Is there that much more of a demand for fantasy books rather than good ol' SF?
Maybe it's because its OK to be unoriginal in fantasy (the themes are generally timeless), but how many books about a "ring around the sun" can be done? Perhaps were just running out of stories to tell.
Hmmm; I was pretty sure, but it's hard to find definitive dates!
According to this page, Windows 3.0 was released in 1990, and the according to the Motif FAQ, Motif was developed "Around 1989", which squares with my Motif programming manual copyright date (which says 1990, but the author worked on it for a year and a half).
So they happened around the same time, so that doesn't really prove anything. But reading this article, Gates claims that the original Windows 1.0 was 1983.
Now, I didn't use Windows prior to 3.0. I know that it was really raw before that time, so the question is whether versions previous to 3.0 had the 3D "Motif look", Menus, etc (which means they probably took it from Motif), or if Windows was like that from the beginning (in which case Motif took it from Windows).
By the way, I didn't say anything about Linux nor Microsoft in my post.
For the record, I completely agree with your take on OSS. It should be far easier to use, and most of all, it needs decent applications (there is not one client application that is superior to Windows or even the Mac. Not one.)
As far as Apple arrogance goes, I mean, come on. They are by far the most arrogant company in the computer industry. To be fair, much of their arrogance comes from their user base. ("Windows stole everything from the Mac!!" or "Microsoft needs Apple for their R&D". Never mind that the Windows GUI bears no resemblence to the Mac GUI, or the fact that the roots of Windows come from Motif, not the Mac).
Perhaps the ultimate example of arrogance is the pricing (gouging) of Apple products ("We don't have to competitive with other computers. We are Apple. We are superior. And our users are locked in.")
Since the kernel is based on BSD, will OS/X use a relatively standard Unix filesystem? In the past MacOS had that wacky system of a "data fork" and a "resource fork". Does anyone know how that will be bolted into a Unix environment?
I agree that they do seem to be opening up things a lot. While there are still some Apple-isms that crop up ("It's over TWICE AS FAST", scream the ads), the fact that it is based on a Unix kernel bodes well.
By the way, I just want to say that I fully expect this post to be moderated down by Mac people ("Finally, we have the power to eliminate ALL negative viewpoints of Apple!")
I await the execution. For my last meal I will take a Porterhouse steak, medium-rare. Thank you.
Just so you know my bias... normally I absolutely detest Apple the company. They have performed far more monopolistic practices than Microsoft ever dreamed of (they were just incompetent at executing them). I despise MacOS, which is the most primitive operating system sold today. I think their hardware is way overrated, and I hate their dumbing down of computers with no way to escape the prison. And the most galling thing was their unbelievable arrogance that they still sat on the industry pedastal (gag).
All this having been said (:)), I have to admit the Aqua interface looks really cool. It's actually not a bad idea to use PDF as your drawing primitive. Traditionally Apple's implementation of ideas has been really poor, so it will be interesting to see if they've managed to pull it off in a reasonable way.
The big question is whether they allow escape from the prison for advanced users? Jobs is notorious for not allowing anything that he personally doesn't find useful and damn everyone else (floppies anyone?).
Slashdot Mirror
If this is the guy who's admin'ing Slashdot, is it his fault that it's so damn slow all the time?
Either they need a bigger server, or they need to rewrite Slashdot in C rather than Perl.
--
Did that strike anyone else as unbelievably bizarre? I mean, am I supposed to say "Oooh! I better catch that one, it's a rare public appearance by Kurt Gray? WOW!
Or was Roblimo just joking?
--
I found the reviewer's bias toward languages with built-in garbage collection a little annoying. For some projects it's appropriate to use a language with garbage collection (web scripts), and sometimes it's not (operating systems). While he may be "amused" by the need for manual deallocation of memory, he should understand that it's generally far more efficient.
Unfortunately, I think the reviewer doesn't have much experience with low-level system programming to understand these trade-offs. Until he does, he should resist making judgements.
P.S. This is not to defend C++ as a language...
--
By the way, I just tried it under gcc (I haven't tried it in a long time), and unfortunately it doesn't appear to work anymore. :(
Anyone want to take a crack at debugging it? :)
For you young 'uns, tiny basic took line numbers. The following should work:
10 for i = 0 to 10
20 print i
30 next i
run
I think it also has a full expression evaluator built in, so you can do some "let j = i * 10" type thing also.
--
Behold! A tiny BASIC interpreter that fits on one 24x80 screen:
#define O(b,f,u,s,c,a)b(){int o=f();switch(*p++){X u:_ o s b();X c:_ o a b();default:p--;_ o;}} ;break;casei le(l){while(!(s=m[l]))l++;if} d=B;while(*F=*s){*s=='"'& ;&j* B){X'E':l=-1P [*d]=S():(*(q=Q(B,"TH"))=0,ps (B+6):(p=B+5,printf("%d\n",S, "\n")=0,G()))X 0:default:G()
;}_ 0;}G(){l=atoi(B);m[l]&&free(m[l]);(p=Q(B," "))?strcpy(m[l]=malloc(strlen(p, <,'>',>)O(K,V,'$',<=,'!', >=)] ;}
#define t(e,d,_,C)X e:f=fopen(B+d,_);C;fclose(f)
#define U(y,z)while(p=Q(s,y))*p++=z,*p=' '
#define N for(i=0;i<11*R;i++)m[i]&&
#define I "%d %s\n",i,m[i]
#define X
#define _ return
#define R 999
typedef char*A;int*C,E[R],L[R],M[R],P[R],l,i,j;char B[R],F[2];A m[12*R],malloc
(),p,q,x,y,z,s,d,f,fopen();A Q(s,o)A s,o;{for(x=s;*x;x++){for(y=x,z=o;*z&&*y==
*z;y++)z++;if(z>o&&!*z)_ x;}_ 0;}main(){m[11*R]="E";while(puts("OK"),gets(B)
)switch(*B){X'R':C=E;l=1;for(i=0;i<R;P[i++]=0);wh
(!Q(s,"\"")){U("<>",'#');U("<=",'$');U(">=",'!');
++;if(j&1||!Q(" \t",F))*d++=*s;s++;}*d--=j=0;if(B[1]!='=')switch(
X'R':B[2]!='M'&&(l=*--C)X'I':B[1]=='N'?gets(p=B),
=B+2,S()&&(p=q+4,l=S()-1))X'P':B[5]=='"'?*d=0,put
()))X'G':p=B+4,B[2]=='S'&&(*C++=l,p++),l=S()-1 X'F':*(q=Q(B,"TO"))=0;p=B+5;P[i
=B[3]]=S();p=q+2;M[i]=S();L[i]=l X'N':++P[*d]<=M[*d]&&(l=L[*d]);}else p=B+2,P[
*B]=S();l++;}X'L':N printf(I)X'N':N free(m[i]),m[i]=0 X'B':_ 0 t('S',5,"w",N
fprintf(f,I))t('O',4,"r",while(fgets(B,R,f))(*Q(B
)),p+1):(m[l]=0,0);}O(S,J,'=',==,'#',!=)O(J,K,'<'
O(V,W,'+',+,'-',-)O(W,Y,'*',*,'/',/)Y(){int o;_*p=='-'?p++,-Y():*p>='0'&&*p<=
'9'?strtol(p,&p,0):*p=='('?p++,o=S(),p++,o:P[*p++
I hope that translated right... Slashdot "Plain Old Text" option is a little broken, so I had to do some HTML translation. Oh well, it gives you the flavor of the IOCCC, anyway.
--
As for drivers, well, I've never cared all that much about multimaedia stuff. As long as I have a semiadequate video card (my s3_virge is fine for me) and a semiadequate sound card, I'm happy enough. I suspect that most of the people using HURD won't be terribly interested in this sort of thing either.
Come on. How about network cards? Wanna run HURD on your laptop (Those are solid wacky drivers). PCMCIA support? How about wireless comms? How about USB support? Scanners? Cameras?ISDN? Tape drives? Good god, how about 3D card support for decent game of Quake? Or of lesser importance, CAD?
Don't make the mistake of judging the needs of others by your own (rather boring) needs (I mean, a Virge? Yuck).
--
Maybe so, but if everyone thought that way, there wouldn't be any new operating systems and we'd be stuck with backwards-compatible pieces of garbage.
Exactly correct: How did Windows get to be the most popular OS in the world? DOS compatibility, baby. They gave people an upgrade path, and even now, people want their DOS apps to work. Heck, I even run a DOS app every now and then (the "Sherlock" game rules! The newer Windows version blows). In fact, my father-in-law still uses a DOS program to store his golf games.
Say what you want about Microsoft, but that's the one thing they have understood better than anyone else: "he who is most compatible wins". Does it prevent a lot of progress taking place? You bet; that's probably the #1 reason Windows is as unstable as it is. They can't implement strong memory protection a la NT without breaking a lot of applications. But guess what? Consumers would rather have their application investment continue to work than not have a "backwards-compatible piece of garbage".
--
Well, I won't argue that there is a lot in Motif that is brain damaged (just how long it took to plug all the memory leaks is evidence enough). I guess my sympathy switched over to the Motif maintainers when I spent too many hours trying to get some particular Xt function to work.
I mean, I've been there, where I've had to write stuff in the main event loop to intercept certain events, in order to implement my own function to fix something in Xt that simply didn't work reliably.
It just seems to me that it ought to be possible to have an Xt-like system that encapsulates the Widget concept, but is not so hugely complex and is much more reliable.
--
I will defend Jaime a bit on this point... it's not that hard to figure out where a function lies if you understand how the heirarchy works:
I think the design and goals of this were pretty good, but as I said in another thread, I have big problems with the implementation. Unfortunately, Motif had to break a lot of this abstraction to implement some of its features.
--
People DO say that about Linux, and it keeps many of them from it. Compatibility was what killed OS/2 (not marketing, by the way).
A new platform rises when it solves problems that the old platform does not, and it does not make the transition too painful. Linux has risen on the server side because it provides solutions better than NT in a lot of areas. You'll note that Linux so far is a miserable failure for the client-side desktop, because of the lack of applications (read: compatibility). OS/2 was far and away technically superior to Win 3.1, but IBM couldn't give it away (they sold machines with both, and people deleted it in favor of 3.1). Again, compatibility rules.
Hurd might have some advantages, but if they aren't huge advantages, not many is going to spend the effort to port applications, device drivers, etc away from Linux when Linux works well enough. Or at the very least, Hurd becomes a second class citizen waiting for a vendor to take pity (Sound familiar OS/2 and Mac users?)
In fact, this is a good lesson for many Linux advocates. On the one hand, advocates decry people choosing the "technically inferior" Windows platform, yet we see the same processes at work that keep people on the "technically inferior" Linux rather than switching to Hurd.
It's all about the applications and getting work done. The OS is just not that big a factor in how people choose platforms.
If the Hurd guys are smart, the will put in a Linux compability layer everywhere that's required and makes porting a simple matter of copying binaries.
--
Is Hurd fully Linux compatible? Device drivers, XFree86, desktops, the whole shebang?
Particularly device drivers. If everyone has to rewrite device drivers for Hurd, then they might as well close up shop.
--
Actually, I'm somewhat surprised at his position considering how slow and unreliable Netscape is under X. Of course, that may not be Xt's fault, but I'm assuming he has Xt/Motif experience beyond just Netscape.
--
Some of the things that are broken under Xt:
That's all I can remember right now; it's been a few years. I lived with Xt/Motif for about 7 years in developing a major hospital application (A Labor and Delivery monitoring and information system called WatchChild). I don't have an exact count of how many bugs and limitations I've coded around in Xt, but it's a lot.
I'll accept that you truthfully didn't have a problem with it with your particular apps. And I should say that it's not all bad; it does have some good concepts and a lot of the design is correct. The problem is that they either a) didn't go far enough to make a feature useful, or b) screwed up the implementation of the feature.
But all I can tell you is that in my experience, it is just a bad piece of software than needs to be replaced by cleaner APIs.
--
The problem is really with Xt, which is the low-level "Widget" interface to X11. It is a slow, buggy, complete pile of garbage. I honestly feel sorry for the Motif guys, because they really wanted to use the "standard" Xt interface. As it stands, they had to write a lot of Xt-incompatible stuff for Motif to work right (keyboard shortcuts come to mind), but there's just no getting around the fact that Xt sucks huge.
I wish that they had had the good sense to just punt Xt and either rewrite it, or come up with something new. Unfortunately, they didn't.
--
As someone who developed a major hospital information system using Motif/Xt, I hope that piece of garbage goes to the fiery depths of hell it deserves.
But let me not pull punches, and tell you what I really think. The problem isn't really with Motif, it's with Xt, which is a slow, buggy, slow, hard to understand, slow, inflexible, slow piece of poop. I am totally convinced that it's Xt that has held back applications from being ported to Unix. I think Motif wanted to be a better package, but it was held back by having to work within the straight-jacket of Xt.
On the other hand, X11 (the low-level protocol) is actually pretty good. If we could get some decent font handling, it could be very good. The only problem with X11 is that you really have to understand how it works in order to be efficient over the network connection, but on balance, it's a very well-designed protocol.
One last dig at Xt: DIE DIE DIE
--
As for "ring around the sun" stories, it may sound rung to death but we haven't even started on the variations of this theme.
That's true, but will a SF author "reuse" a plot device like the Ringworld when it's already "been done" by Larry Niven?
To tell you the truth, I wish they would. Ringworld was a pretty bad novel from a plot and character point of view, but the themes were so fascinating that it made up for them. I wouldn't be opposed at all to seeing other authors pick up these themes are try fresh plots but with the same device. There are innumerable interesting stories that could be told about different reasons a ringworld would be built, and different societies that would come out of it.
The question is, would the author get slaughtered for "unoriginality" or "ripping off" Larry Niven? One would hope not, since zillions of authors have ripped off themes from Shakespeare, but often the variations on the same theme can bring a freshness to the material.
--
Also, for some reason, fantasy has been exploding while SF has been declining. I'm not a huge fantasy fan, so this has been really depressing for me.
Is there that much more of a demand for fantasy books rather than good ol' SF?
Maybe it's because its OK to be unoriginal in fantasy (the themes are generally timeless), but how many books about a "ring around the sun" can be done? Perhaps were just running out of stories to tell.
--
Hmmm; I was pretty sure, but it's hard to find definitive dates!
According to this page, Windows 3.0 was released in 1990, and the according to the Motif FAQ, Motif was developed "Around 1989", which squares with my Motif programming manual copyright date (which says 1990, but the author worked on it for a year and a half).
So they happened around the same time, so that doesn't really prove anything. But reading this article, Gates claims that the original Windows 1.0 was 1983.
Now, I didn't use Windows prior to 3.0. I know that it was really raw before that time, so the question is whether versions previous to 3.0 had the 3D "Motif look", Menus, etc (which means they probably took it from Motif), or if Windows was like that from the beginning (in which case Motif took it from Windows).
Anyone have a memory of pre 3.0?
--
You do realize that the purpose of moderation is not to score down what you don't agree with?
--
By the way, I didn't say anything about Linux nor Microsoft in my post.
For the record, I completely agree with your take on OSS. It should be far easier to use, and most of all, it needs decent applications (there is not one client application that is superior to Windows or even the Mac. Not one.)
As far as Apple arrogance goes, I mean, come on. They are by far the most arrogant company in the computer industry. To be fair, much of their arrogance comes from their user base. ("Windows stole everything from the Mac!!" or "Microsoft needs Apple for their R&D". Never mind that the Windows GUI bears no resemblence to the Mac GUI, or the fact that the roots of Windows come from Motif, not the Mac).
Perhaps the ultimate example of arrogance is the pricing (gouging) of Apple products ("We don't have to competitive with other computers. We are Apple. We are superior. And our users are locked in.")
--
Since the kernel is based on BSD, will OS/X use a relatively standard Unix filesystem? In the past MacOS had that wacky system of a "data fork" and a "resource fork". Does anyone know how that will be bolted into a Unix environment?
--
I agree that they do seem to be opening up things a lot. While there are still some Apple-isms that crop up ("It's over TWICE AS FAST", scream the ads), the fact that it is based on a Unix kernel bodes well.
--
By the way, I just want to say that I fully expect this post to be moderated down by Mac people ("Finally, we have the power to eliminate ALL negative viewpoints of Apple!")
I await the execution. For my last meal I will take a Porterhouse steak, medium-rare. Thank you.
--
Just so you know my bias... normally I absolutely detest Apple the company. They have performed far more monopolistic practices than Microsoft ever dreamed of (they were just incompetent at executing them). I despise MacOS, which is the most primitive operating system sold today. I think their hardware is way overrated, and I hate their dumbing down of computers with no way to escape the prison. And the most galling thing was their unbelievable arrogance that they still sat on the industry pedastal (gag).
All this having been said (:)), I have to admit the Aqua interface looks really cool. It's actually not a bad idea to use PDF as your drawing primitive. Traditionally Apple's implementation of ideas has been really poor, so it will be interesting to see if they've managed to pull it off in a reasonable way.
The big question is whether they allow escape from the prison for advanced users? Jobs is notorious for not allowing anything that he personally doesn't find useful and damn everyone else (floppies anyone?).
--
A moderator actually marked this as insightful.
I was a joke, you boob.
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