Heh

Posted Nov 19, 2011 9:26 UTC (Sat) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

All the stuff you talk about is about right now.

I talk about stuff which is relevant now because AT pushes MINIX as production system now.

At that time, it certainly would have been possible for BSD to gain critical mass.

May be, but this is just another monolithic kernel.

But back in 1992, there was no USB, cell phones were big monstrous things.

Sure. But 1992 already had lots and lots of operation systems with [macro]kernels and memory protection. Yet Tannebaum wrote this back then:

Microkernels have won. The only real argument for monolithic systems was performance, and there is now enough evidence showing that microkernel systems can be just as fast as monolithic systems (e.g., Rick Rashid has published papers comparing Mach 3.0 to monolithic systems) that it is now all over but the shoutin`.

AT (and many, many, many others) just can not accept the fact of life: software development is not engineering and it's not like math. Programs evolve like a breeds. There are both blog posts and articles on subject.

Note that this is rare case where, as time goes on, the analogy becomes not less applicable, but more applicable. In selection we learned how to transplant genes from one unrelated species to another. At the same time in programming complexity and diversity grew so much that such transplantation often is quite problematic. When programs were measured in thousands of lines it was easy to just rewrite them for different platform even if languages differed - today we invent complicated tools and even then rejection is not uncommon. The underlying reason for why selection and programming is similar is trivial: the same dichotomy exist. If you want to have more of the same cells - you only need to add sugar to Petri dish and larger organisms can be replicated without much difficulty. And similarly with programs: you can duplicate them in billions for very small price. But to purposefully change them... that's different story.

This is why I despise these "novel inventions" (like MINIX and/or Microsoft Synergy) so much: their creators ignore this important evolution process completely and totally. They live in the past when it was much less important (as this anecdote shows) and instead of trying to think about a way to plant their ideas in the existing system they preach the virtues of new system and try to perfect it.

This does not work. Both in biology and computers the first "good enough" specimen which is brought to the new niche wins - be it rabbits in Australia or Android in smartphones. Timing is critical, perfection is not. When AT talks about embedded systems and says that We are going to port it to the ARM and do that starting in January it just shows such a lack of understanding that's not even funny. Linux is pushing all other systems in embedded space! Yesterday and today! Not tomorrow or 10 years after today! Your window of opportunity is shrinking - fast. Yet MINIX developers are complacent and talk about virtues of their system instead. Instead of showing working prototypes (which will be kinda "yes, we know we are slow to the party but there are still small hope") they sya that they will start porting in January? Gosh. Just what they are thinking?