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Ask HN: Abandoned/dead projects you think died before their time and why?

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Re: Ask HN: Abandoned/dead projects you think died before their time and why?

#741

Post by vacuity »

IshKebab wrote: post #670
tjchear wrote: post #554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s stopping other Unix-like systems from adopting the everything is a file philosophy?

Probably the fact that it's a pretty terrible idea. It means you take a normal properly typed API and smush it down into some poorly specified text format that you now have to write probably-broken parsers for. I often find bugs in programs that interact with `/proc` on Linux because they don't expect some output (e.g. spaces in paths, or optional entries). The only reasons people think it's a good idea in the first…

I think you have to standardize a basic object system and then allow people to build opt-in interfaces on top, because any single-level abstraction will quickly be pulled in countless directions for as many users.

Re: Ask HN: Abandoned/dead projects you think died before their time and why?

#742

Post by tehdely »

gmuslera wrote: post #3

Maemo/Meego. I know there is Sailfish still around, but things would had been very different today if Nokia had put all its weight on it back then.

TITCR.

Hit ctrl-f and typed Meego as soon as I saw this thread, hoping I'd be the first. Alas.

The N9 was literally a vision from an alternate timeline where a mobile platform from a major manufacturer was somehow hackable, polished, and secure. Favorite phone I've ever owned and I used it until it started to malfunction.

Had a Jolla for a bit, too. It was nice to see them try to keep the basic ideas going but unfortunately it was a pain in the ass to use thanks to their decision to go with a radio that only supported GSM/EDGE in the US. Had to carry around a MiFi just to give it acceptable data service.

I think the idea with Jolla is that if Nokia ever did an about-face, they were ready to be reabsorbed and get things back on the right track. Unfortunately, though we do once again have a "Nokia", it's just another Android white label with no interest in maintaining its own leading-edge smartphone platform.

Re: Ask HN: Abandoned/dead projects you think died before their time and why?

#743

Post by restalis »

pessimizer wrote: post #488
snovymgodym wrote: post #2

ReactOS, the effort to create a free and open source Windows NT reimplementation. It has been in existence in some form or another for nearly 30 years, but did not gain the traction it needed and as of writing it's still not in a usable state on real hardware. It's not abandoned, but progress on it is moving so slow that I doubt we'll ever see it be released in a state that's useful for real users. It's too bad, beca…

> I think people underestimate the difficulty involved in the project I don't think people do, it sounds like a nearly impossible struggle, and at the end you get a Windows clone. I can't imagine hating yourself enough to work on it for an extended period of time for no money and putting yourself and your hard work in legal risk. It's a miracle we have Wine and serious luck that we have Proton. People losing Windows…

"putting yourself and your hard work in legal risk"

Like what? I'm genuinely curious what personal risks faces anyone from contributing to ReactOS. I also am curious what kind of legal risk may threaten the work? I mean, even in the unlikely scenario that something gets proven illegal and ordered to be dismissed from the project, what would prevent any such particular expunged part to be re-implemented by some paid contractor (now under legally indisputable circumstances), thus rendering the initial effort (of legal action) moot?

Re: Ask HN: Abandoned/dead projects you think died before their time and why?

#745

Post by 6SixTy »

ghssds wrote: post #41
snovymgodym wrote: post #2

ReactOS, the effort to create a free and open source Windows NT reimplementation. It has been in existence in some form or another for nearly 30 years, but did not gain the traction it needed and as of writing it's still not in a usable state on real hardware. It's not abandoned, but progress on it is moving so slow that I doubt we'll ever see it be released in a state that's useful for real users. It's too bad, beca…

They had no chance. Look how long it tooks for Wine to get where they are. Their project is Wine + a kernel + device drivers compatibility, and a moving target.

ReactOS right now focuses on Windows XP era hardware and compatibility, also not guaranteed to work outside a VM.

Re: Ask HN: Abandoned/dead projects you think died before their time and why?

#746

Post by al_borland »

alance wrote: post #309

I liked del.icio.us, it was online bookmark sharing, but with actual people I knew, and it had genuinely useful category tagging. I guess it was basically replaced with https://old.reddit.com and maybe twitter.

I was always confused my del.icio.us, and bookmark sharing in general. In my head bookmarks are sharing are distinct things. Bookmarks are things I want to save to visit again or a shortcut to easily visit often. Sharing is something I think someone else might find interesting, and thinks others will too, but I probably won't ever visit again.

I will bookmark the site to pay my utility bill, but it's not something I'd ever share. I might share a link to funny YouTube video, but wouldn't bookmark it.

I think social bookmarking didn't really know what it was, which is why the modern versions are more about sharing links than bookmarking. I don't post my bookmarks to Reddit, where people follow me as a person. I would post links I think are worth sharing to a topic people are interested in following.

Re: Ask HN: Abandoned/dead projects you think died before their time and why?

#747

Post by mikehall314 »

markasoftware wrote: post #558
dimal wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was all gung ho on XHTML back in the day until I realized that a single unclosed tag in an ad or another portion of our app that I had no control over would cause the entire page to fail. The user would see nothing except a giant ugly error. And your solution of rendering the rest of the page in Times New Roman isn’t an option. Do you try to maintain any of the HTML semantics or just render plain text? If it’s plai…

if the world was all XHTML, then you wouldn't put an ad on your site that wasn't valid XHTML, the same way you wouldn't import a python library that's not valid python.

But all it takes in that world is for a single browser vendor to decide - hey, we will even render broken XHTML, because we would rather show something than nothing - and you’re back to square one.

I know which I, as a user, would prefer. I want to use a browser which lets me see the website, not just a parse error. I don’t care if the code is correct.

Re: Ask HN: Abandoned/dead projects you think died before their time and why?

#749

Post by hshdhdhehd »

PufPufPuf wrote: post #255

Definitely Opa: http://opalang.org/ In 2011, before TypeScript, Next.js or even React, they had seamless server-client code, in a strongly typed functional language with support for features like JSX-like inline HTML, async/await, string interpolation, built-in MongoDB ORM, CSS-in-JS, and many syntax features that were added to ECMAScript since then. I find it wild how this project was 90%+ correct on how we will bui…

Wow, why didnt this take off?

Re: Ask HN: Abandoned/dead projects you think died before their time and why?

#750

Post by d3Xt3r »

Animats wrote: post #230

- Photon, the graphical interface for QNX. Oriented more towards real time (widgets included gauges) but good enough to support two different web browsers. No delays. This was a real time operating system. - MacOS 8. Not the Linux thing, but Copeland. This was a modernized version of the original MacOS, continuing the tradition of no command line. Not having a command line forces everyone to get their act together ab…

In addition to Photon, I would say QNX itself (the desktop OS). I ran QNX 6 Neutrino on my PIII 450 back in the day, and the experience was so much more better than every other mainstream OS on the market. The thing that blew me away was how responsive the desktop was while multitasking, something Linux struggled with even decades later.

Similarly, I'm also gutted that the QNX 1.44MB demo floppy didn't survive past the floppy era - they had some really good tech there. Imagine if they pitched it as a rescue/recovery OS for PCs, you could've run it entirely from the UEFI. Or say as an OS for smart TVs and other consumer smart devices.

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