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Got an old Raspberry Pi spare? Try RISC OS. It is, something else

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Re: Got an old Raspberry Pi spare? Try RISC OS. It is, something else

#11

Post by dietr1ch »

ajb wrote: post #7

It was ahead of its time in UX, but rather behind in the foundations. It's a single user system with no real security, and there was no system of shared libraries - to share code between applications, it was usual to put the shared code in a kernel module and call the kernel. Even the standard C library worked this way. Amusingly, when you invoked the system console -which was at a lower level than the gui system, ef…

Sharing code? I like my apps bundling a whole browser to render a couple buttons

Re: Got an old Raspberry Pi spare? Try RISC OS. It is, something else

#12

Post by ajb »

Acorn was a curious company. It managed to get incredible amounts of work done, by assigning big projects to individuals instead of teams. My memory is not to be relied on at this lapse of time, but I seem to recall that in the final years there was a browser maintained by one guy, a port of Java by two, and an implementation of directX by another. Obviously all those projects were much smaller back then (around 98) but still, those devs were doing the work of what another company had a team to do. And in fact this does work, as communication overhead is reduced, but in many cases the increase in productivity loses strategically to the slower time to market.

Re: Got an old Raspberry Pi spare? Try RISC OS. It is, something else

#13

Post by beeboobaa3 »

ajb wrote: post #12

Acorn was a curious company. It managed to get incredible amounts of work done, by assigning big projects to individuals instead of teams. My memory is not to be relied on at this lapse of time, but I seem to recall that in the final years there was a browser maintained by one guy, a port of Java by two, and an implementation of directX by another. Obviously all those projects were much smaller back then (around 98)…

From personal experience it's amazing how much more productive I am on solo projects vs working with other people. When you're solo you can just go, but in a team everything needs to be discussed or at least communicated.

Re: Got an old Raspberry Pi spare? Try RISC OS. It is, something else

#14

Post by dheera »

That UI looks like something out of the late 80s / early 90s. I can smell the VCR head cleaner and scratch-n-sniff stickers and hear the dial-up internet bee-bee-bee-bee-gurglegugrle-dong-ding-dong-ding-whooooooooosh-wheeeeeeeesh-bling! bling whooooo.

Can we at least upgrade the fonts, colors, and negative space to make it look more 2020s?

Re: Got an old Raspberry Pi spare? Try RISC OS. It is, something else

#15

Post by DowagerDave »

beeboobaa3 wrote: post #13
ajb wrote: post #12

Acorn was a curious company. It managed to get incredible amounts of work done, by assigning big projects to individuals instead of teams. My memory is not to be relied on at this lapse of time, but I seem to recall that in the final years there was a browser maintained by one guy, a port of Java by two, and an implementation of directX by another. Obviously all those projects were much smaller back then (around 98)…

From personal experience it's amazing how much more productive I am on solo projects vs working with other people. When you're solo you can just go, but in a team everything needs to be discussed or at least communicated.

Scaling software development has been THE vexing problem since day one. There's no doubt that the most efficient system fits in the head of a single person; the challenge is then what?

Re: Got an old Raspberry Pi spare? Try RISC OS. It is, something else

#16

Post by fweimer »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #6

RISC OS has been limping on thanks to the efforts of some extremely hard-working volunteers, but a roadblock is coming. The Pi 5 drops support for 32-bit ARM code, in which RISC OS written, and since enormous chunks of it are written in assembly, there is no trivial way to port. Even so, it's heartwarming that people continue to put efforts into operating systems that aren't related to Unix or Windows. I'm happy to s…

> The Pi 5 drops support for 32-bit ARM code

Note that EL0 (userspace) support is still present, but RISC OS cannot currently run entirely in userspace.

Re: Got an old Raspberry Pi spare? Try RISC OS. It is, something else

#17

Post by joosters »

dheera wrote: post #14

That UI looks like something out of the late 80s / early 90s. I can smell the VCR head cleaner and scratch-n-sniff stickers and hear the dial-up internet bee-bee-bee-bee-gurglegugrle-dong-ding-dong-ding-whooooooooosh-wheeeeeeeesh-bling! bling whooooo. Can we at least upgrade the fonts, colors, and negative space to make it look more 2020s?

Can we at least upgrade the fonts, colors, and negative space to make it look more 2020s?

Of course YOU can, it's open source, feel free to hack away at it.

Re: Got an old Raspberry Pi spare? Try RISC OS. It is, something else

#18

Post by silisili »

DowagerDave wrote: post #15
beeboobaa3 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From personal experience it's amazing how much more productive I am on solo projects vs working with other people. When you're solo you can just go, but in a team everything needs to be discussed or at least communicated.

Scaling software development has been THE vexing problem since day one. There's no doubt that the most efficient system fits in the head of a single person; the challenge is then what?

I've pretty much found the most it scales linearly is 2, and only then in good conditions such as working well together, greenfielding, and something with clear enough boundaries.

After that, well, it basically flatlines and even seems to decrease at times.

Re: Got an old Raspberry Pi spare? Try RISC OS. It is, something else

#19

Post by kaspm »

DowagerDave wrote: post #15
beeboobaa3 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From personal experience it's amazing how much more productive I am on solo projects vs working with other people. When you're solo you can just go, but in a team everything needs to be discussed or at least communicated.

Scaling software development has been THE vexing problem since day one. There's no doubt that the most efficient system fits in the head of a single person; the challenge is then what?

Efficient but not necessarily better. When I'm solo developing I go back later and I made some questionable decisions a team member would have identified.

Re: Got an old Raspberry Pi spare? Try RISC OS. It is, something else

#20

Post by beachy »

ajb wrote: post #12

Acorn was a curious company. It managed to get incredible amounts of work done, by assigning big projects to individuals instead of teams. My memory is not to be relied on at this lapse of time, but I seem to recall that in the final years there was a browser maintained by one guy, a port of Java by two, and an implementation of directX by another. Obviously all those projects were much smaller back then (around 98)…

Obligatory Fred Brooks quote: "The bearing of a child takes nine months, no matter how many women are assigned.”
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