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Symbian Source Code

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Re: Symbian Source Code

#171

Post by pramodbiligiri »

danrocks wrote: post #147
atleta wrote: post #39

I used to work for Nokia Research during the mid 2000's. I remember how hard it was to get the source code for this back then as internal employees... One of my colleagues was working on a research prototype that needed tighter integration with the system than what you could achieve with a deployed app. So he needed the source code and the build environment for the OS. And for that he needed quite a few people to agr…

I probably know you, or some of your colleagues. Worked in Mountain View during the late 2000s. I really hated Symbian with a passion, and I was on the Java (and then Qt) side of it. It was embarrassing to try to sell that thing to external developers, but that was part of my job. I was a good soldier though, and ended up writing a few chapters in the worst computer programming book of all time, on how to do JavaME d…

I bought this book and tried my first mobile programs based on it! I thought it was well written. It was a big hit back then, if I recall correctly.

I’ve continued being a server-side programmer though :)

Re: Symbian Source Code

#172

Post by t43562 »

This was what my team developed - a build system that worked properly with parallelism. I'm still very proud of it even though there were design issues, it was really quite innovative in its way and the only big mistake was to make it so Symbian specific:

https://github.com/SymbianSource/oss.FCL.sftools.dev.build/t...

Re: Symbian Source Code

#173

Post by lproven »

gendal wrote: post #46

There's a great (and insanely detailed) book on the rise and fall of Symbian by a guy who was there for most, if not all, of the journey: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Smartphones-beyond-Lessons-remarkab... When I say detailed, I mean detailed... David Wood seems to have copies of every email and memo he ever wrote when he was there... and he doesn't hold back when it comes to sharing them. Required reading for anybody se…

El Reg has an in-depth review of the book, FWIW.

Here is the single-page view:

https://www.theregister.com/Print/2014/09/12/blockbuster_boo...

Re: Symbian Source Code

#174

Post by miohtama »

lproven wrote: post #166
miohtama wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think there is anything useful for modern day programmer in the codebase? Any value on this code for anyone, anymore? Or do we have better alternatives and rewrites for everything that can be found in this repo?

Very much yes. There are only a handful of C++ OSes out there. • EPOC32/Symbian. • BeOS (now lost somewhere inside of Access) and Haiku, its FOSS recreation. • Genode (still in prototype stage, really) • Serenity OS (not yet self-hosting, & barely able to run on bare metal.) Symbian is by far the most successful, long-lived, best-selling C++ there has ever been. By 21st century standards, it is tiny, simple, low-reso…

Who is using Symbian today?

Re: Symbian Source Code

#175

Post by OOPMan »

KolenCh wrote: post #159
nyanpasu64 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

youtube-dl/yt-dlp (Python) is a full second slower than youtubedr (Go) or youtube.com (JS) to download YouTube videos, and I think a lot of that is due to interpreter warmup (though I don't know exactly why). Sadly mpv only supports youtube-dl/yt-dlp for watching videos, and youtubedr doesn't have the vast plugin ecosystem of yt-dlp for non-YouTube websites.

The above mentioned Python’s import delay. This is a notorious behavior in high performance situation (including your cli startup time example). Essentially the import process is IO intensive. This comes up in massive parallel applications as at launch each process is importing the same stuffs. It is briefly mentioned for example in https://docs.nersc.gov/development/languages/python/ If you really care about the sta…

I've run into the import issue as well, it's especially painful if something imported is doing work using a slow library (e.g. a config module loading a HOCON config using pyhocon a.k.a slowasmolasseshocon)

Re: Symbian Source Code

#176

Post by miohtama »

KolenCh wrote: post #159
nyanpasu64 wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

youtube-dl/yt-dlp (Python) is a full second slower than youtubedr (Go) or youtube.com (JS) to download YouTube videos, and I think a lot of that is due to interpreter warmup (though I don't know exactly why). Sadly mpv only supports youtube-dl/yt-dlp for watching videos, and youtubedr doesn't have the vast plugin ecosystem of yt-dlp for non-YouTube websites.

The above mentioned Python’s import delay. This is a notorious behavior in high performance situation (including your cli startup time example). Essentially the import process is IO intensive. This comes up in massive parallel applications as at launch each process is importing the same stuffs. It is briefly mentioned for example in https://docs.nersc.gov/development/languages/python/ If you really care about the sta…

Unless your 1) execution environment (CPU, dlls) or 2) Python source code files change, you can use “unexec” strategies like Emacs

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21394916

Re: Symbian Source Code

#177

Post by miohtama »

distances wrote: post #153
ma5ter wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, It's true, most my fiends who used to install pirated application (.sis file) from internet got affected by these viruses and at that time most popular antivirus companies (McAfee, Kaspersky, f-secure) had Symbian versions of their antivirus programs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabir_(computer_worm) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commwarrior

I'm not sure what you expect here. Is it the manufacturer's fault if you sideload virus infested applications?

Note that these are not computer virii by the definition, as they cannot spread independently. User always need to download the application somewhere and install it themself. The closest analogue would be Remote Access Trojan (RAT) infected Windows PC pirated software.

Re: Symbian Source Code

#178

Post by rollcat »

ryukoposting wrote: post #132
marcodiego wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux on the desktop was similar to that in early 2000's: hardware, software and services were frequently not compatible. The IE monopoly made things even worse. Pioneers suffered, there are still some problems, but the landscape changed drastically because of those people. Some pioneers must be willing to change the world and pay the price for that.

In short, be the change you wish to see in the world. If you want there to be a viable competitor to Chrome, use Firefox. If you want there to be a viable competitor to Apple and Google (and you have the cash), buy a Librem 5. The alternatives are out there, begging to be used. As an active developer in a programming language with a small ecosystem, I scream this to the clouds all day: great software doesn't become w…

> If you want there to be a viable competitor to Apple and Google (and you have the cash), buy a Librem 5.

No thank you, I will never buy or use any hardware from Purism. They are openly hypocritical and I have zero trust for them.

Quoting from: https://puri.sm/posts/librem5-solving-the-first-fsf-ryf-hurd...

> The RYF has a “secondary processor” exclusion that can be granted on a case by case basis. We will leverage this exclusion to load and train the DDR PHY on the i.MX 8. We will use a secondary processor to keep binary blobs out of u-boot and the kernel.

Add extra silicon, to lock the user out of updating the firmware. Because the FSF will grant you an arbitrary badge of honour if the firmware is closed source, but not user-updatable. This is some next-level bullshit.

This is on top of the hardware being utter crap in terms of protecting user security or privacy; marcan_42 explains it quite well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30761886

If you want a reasonable trade-off between freedom and security, GrapheneOS is actually the only viable contender I'm aware of.

> If you want there to be a viable competitor to Chrome, use Firefox.

The IE monopoly was broken, because Mozilla made a better product. Also, it took Chrome to fully displace IE.

This is why FOSS can't "win". You have to have a better product, not just a feel-good badge. Look at the FOSS projects out there that are actually successful: they all have a good product strategy behind them. But for most FOSS activists, designing a better product is apparently much harder than indoctrination.

Re: Symbian Source Code

#179

Post by dotancohen »

chipotle_coyote wrote: post #148
dietrichepp wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Worth mentioning the N-Gage, which got a Wordle port recently, powered by SDL2: https://hackaday.com/2022/04/08/wordle-comes-to-the-nokia-n-... I remember the N-Gage being lambasted when it came out, but recently I realized that those same people also lambasted the iPod, and maybe I can't trust those people's judgment about tech. You know, the Slashdot crowd. Maybe it was a good system that was just poorly positioned…

The original N-Gage made a few astoundingly bad industrial design decisions that came up in literally every review. * They put the phone microphone and speaker on the side of the device, which meant holding the top of the gadget to your head if you wanted to use it as a phone without a headset -- this was both awkward physically and looked phenomenally stupid. * You had to remove the battery to get to the game cartri…

  > They put the phone microphone and speaker on the side of the device.
I actually drilled a few tiny holes in the side of my N-Gage so that I could hold it like a normal phone. The actual speaker was not near the edge, and was mounted such that its natural direction was towards the rear of the device. The N-Gage had a channel moving sound from the speaker out towards the side.

I have no idea why they engineered the device like that. It would have been easier to just put a grill right where I drilled my holes.

Re: Symbian Source Code

#180

Post by mc_woods »

lproven wrote: post #168
dustyquince wrote: post #145

Am I the only person who saw this post and figured that it was the source code for a Sybian machine and rolled my eyes, thinking, "How sophisticated could it be, really?"

That closeness of name was pointed out back in the 20th century when the name was announced. But then again, remember the somewhat deserved reputation for awareness of that other product line in the software/techie world... https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/06/30/also-known-as-...

Harsh, but fair.
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