Marc Andreessen: "Linux Has Matured" (BusinessWeek)
Another key thing to remember is that everyone coming out of college is familiar with Linux. It has overwhelming market share in colleges and universities. In every computer science program I'm aware of, it's the default language people teach on. They like it because it's open-source, and you can look at how it really works. The reason that's important is because those kids leaving college will enter the workforce and bring those skills to their employers."
Posted Mar 30, 2004 20:35 UTC (Tue)
by smoogen (subscriber, #97)
[Link] (9 responses)
Huh? What? Linux is its own language? Damn and here I am studying C.
Posted Mar 30, 2004 20:45 UTC (Tue)
by Ross (guest, #4065)
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Posted Mar 30, 2004 20:59 UTC (Tue)
by error27 (subscriber, #8346)
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Posted Mar 30, 2004 21:22 UTC (Tue)
by jonabbey (guest, #2736)
[Link]
Especially if you've been talking in high-level marketing gloss for a long while, as Marc has. ;-)
Posted Mar 30, 2004 21:05 UTC (Tue)
by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330)
[Link] (4 responses)
When people speak off the cuff, they mis-speak. Andressen knows full well what Linux is, and his basic argument is correct; people are coming out of school knowing Linux internals.
Posted Mar 30, 2004 21:06 UTC (Tue)
by JoeBuck (subscriber, #2330)
[Link] (3 responses)
Another thing: it's quite likely that it's the reporter who mangled the quote.
Posted Mar 30, 2004 22:33 UTC (Tue)
by Baylink (guest, #755)
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Posted Mar 31, 2004 9:01 UTC (Wed)
by james (subscriber, #1325)
[Link]
I dropped my physical computer magazine subscriptions largely because I was spotting more mistakes in fact and methodology than I was learning from them. I was never sure if the sector had gone down the tubes, or if they were always that bad, and I had just learned enough to spot it.
We get spoilt by the standards of sites like LWN, and the ability to comment and clarify loose wording. It must be very good discipline for the journalists, too!
Posted Apr 2, 2004 23:43 UTC (Fri)
by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
[Link]
I don't think it's mangled. I think Andreessen meant "language" and would say it again.
But it's not literal; it's a metaphor. (Someone mentioned Marc's marketing background -- you'd expect him to talk in metaphors instead of plain English).
If you graduated from college speaking only French, your company would probably have a hard time getting you to use any other language on the job. Andreessen's saying the same concept applies to the person who comes out of college knowing only Linux systems.
Posted Mar 30, 2004 23:46 UTC (Tue)
by josh_stern (guest, #4868)
[Link]
Posted Mar 30, 2004 23:19 UTC (Tue)
by proski (subscriber, #104)
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Posted Mar 31, 2004 4:29 UTC (Wed)
by TwoTimeGrime (guest, #11688)
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Posted Mar 31, 2004 10:43 UTC (Wed)
by Duncan (guest, #6647)
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Posted Mar 31, 2004 16:26 UTC (Wed)
by bdw (guest, #16047)
[Link]
I've setup a couple small businesses to run Linux as their e-mail server and as a domain controller via the Samba package. A good reason to not make blanket staments like that....
On every computer science program I'm aware of, it's the default language people teach on.
Marc Andreessen: "Linux Has Matured" (BusinessWeek)
Yeah, I saw that too. I saw him on TV the other day as an expert onMarc Andreessen: "Linux Has Matured" (BusinessWeek)
outsourcing. His arguments didn't even make sense (it was like they were
coming to the opposite conclusion that logic would lead to). I'm not sure
how the media chooses "experts" to quote.
I'm pretty sure that Andreessen knows the difference between a programming language and an os. Just a thinko or something.
Marc Andreessen: "Linux Has Matured" (BusinessWeek)
Marc wasn't quoted as saying 'programming language'. You can certainly have people who 'speak Linux' or 'speak Windows', and in that sense you could call it a language.Marc Andreessen: "Linux Has Matured" (BusinessWeek)
Marc Andreessen: "Linux Has Matured" (BusinessWeek)
Marc Andreessen: "Linux Has Matured" (BusinessWeek)
I don't really see that it's pertinent who mangled it, it's mangled. Marc Andreessen: "Linux Has Matured" (BusinessWeek)
And it's *depressing*.
I catch the broadcasting engineering magazines (and worse, the computing industry magazines)
doing this about once every 10 pages, these days; don't these people hire *editors* anymore?
Marc Andreessen: "Linux Has Matured" (BusinessWeek)
James.
Linux as a language: yes
Thinking about the overall direction of application development andMarc Andreessen: "Linux Has Matured" (BusinessWeek)
business, employers want to solve problems of increasing complexity in
a time efficient way, and this implies using existing tools and libraries.
Without implying any slight to the distinction between a programming
language and libraries for working in that language, the concept of
someone coming out of a CS dept. and being more familiar with
Glib/Gtk/Gnome, Qt/KDE, MySQL, ImageMagick, Perl/Python, Java,
BerkelyDB, etc. compared to the more MS-centric parallels is very
significant for a business. In this sense, there is a Linux vs. Microsoft
language for software solutions.
What is "going to go 100% on Intel or x86 hardware"?
The market is going to go 50-50 Linux and Microsoft. And it's going to go 100% on Intel or x86 hardware.
So, is it Linux that is "going to go 100% on Intel or x86 hardware"? Or it's cars and cellphones that are "going to go 100% on Intel or x86 hardware"? I don't believe either is correct.
...
It means you can assume that Linux is present if you're building a cell phone or a new personal digital assistant or a new car. In the future, the 50 microprocessor chips in a car that are now running on a variety of proprietary operating systems will run on Linux.
Good point. Andreessen is probably just talking about servers.
What is "going to go 100% on Intel or x86 hardware"?
You took the quotes out of context. The first part of the quote was in answer to What is "going to go 100% on Intel or x86 hardware"?
one question, the second was in answer to another, in a different context. Taking
from two parts of the interview like that.. of course it doesn't make sense!
If you look at the original article, the 50/50 quote is in answer to a question
mentioning the market-share MS has been gaining (from the context, the server
market, since that's what the previous question/answer was referring to). Even in
your quote, "it's" would refer to "the market".
Thus, he's predicting that "the (server) market" will soon be split nearly 50/50
between MS and Linux, both of them running on x86 style hardware. I agree with
that viewpoint (with the caveat that x86_64 is included in x86, as that migration is
in its early stages as well but looks to pick up steam, now that Intel has blessed the
platform as well).
The part of your quote below the "...", as mentioned, is excerpted from the answer
to an entirely DIFFERENT question, referring to embedded devices. Within
context, then, that part of the quote again makes perfect sense, and I agree with
his prediction, that it won't be long until most of the embedded space including cell
phones, pdas, and automotive microprocessors, will be running Linux instead of
the assorted proprietaryware platforms they are running now. Indeed, a recent
LWN article covering one of the electronics shows (I forget which), made the
observation that while last year, quite a number of companies were trumpeting
Linux inside. this year, few mentioned it, and when asked about it, the prevailing
attitude seemed to be "Well, DUH!! OF COURSE it's running Linux inside!"
Thus, I agree with him on those points. However, there WERE a couple points
about the article that struck me as odd. One was the "language" comment, as
already covered, and, as I abruptly paused to go back and re-parse, to see where
I'd gone wrong, as others have already mentioned, I decided he was simply using
"PR-Speak", shortcuts. That is, he was referring to the tech sub-culture with it's
own "mini-language" that has developed around both Linux and MS. His point
there, then, as I took it upon re-parsing, was that "kids" coming out of college now
speak "Linux" as their technical "native tongue", just as they did MS and Office, a
few years ago.
The second one, from the point of view of a Libreware user and supporter, was the
question that was NOT asked. We know the history of the Mozilla code and how it
was open-sourced. We also know that Marc Andreessen remains in software, altho
in a new company. The glaringly obvious question that was NOT asked, therefore,
was whether he'd considered the open source approach for his company's current
products, what made them choose the other path, and what might change that in
the future. Of course, this was a Business Week article, originally, NOT an LWN
article, and given the different target audience, I suppose one can understand the
omission of this question..
Duncan
I was a bit amused by Andreessen's claim that if a small business is running Linux, the business must be run by a hobbyist.Marc Andreessen: "Linux Has Matured" (BusinessWeek)