A Generation Lost in the Bazaar • Hacker News Board

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#311

Post by gruseom » Tue, Aug 21, 2012, 12:23 AM UTC

toyg wrote: post #309

gruseom wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half of this thread is unfortunate terminological noise, but phk did specify what he means by "cathedral" – software governed by a coherent design vision – and Windows and Office are not only not that, they are the poster children for not that. The words "cathedral" vs. "bazaar" have obviously gotten too vague for people to meaningfully argue about. But "coherent design vision" has a much clearer meaning, and an enor…

So a "cathedral" must be "coherent" to be a true Scotsman? Coherency cannot be measured, and it's extremely subjective. The *nix world can be extremely coherent: for example, you'll always find libtool, whether you want it or not, and your '70s-like filesystem layout. Isn't that "coherent" with its history? This is not true even of Android and iOS, the modern wonderchildren he cheers on: a quick look at the Android f…

I honestly can't tell what you're trying to say. (Other than the last bit, and that part is needlessly noxious.)

"Software that can fit in one's head" and "coherent design vision" are closely related things. I'm in favor of both. If you're saying we're past the point where that's feasible in real-world systems, that's just assuming the conclusion – the wrong conclusion, in my view.

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#312

Post by josephcooney » Tue, Aug 21, 2012, 12:33 AM UTC

LaGrange wrote: post #237

paulhauggis wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

as long as I can use the term I coined: "open shit"

Actually, the proper traditional way to insult Open Source is "Open Sores". Use that and the feeling I got during flame wars between high schoolers on IRC channels in the late nineties will be complete.

A friend of mine is really big on the term "freetard" for open source software.

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#313

Post by eaton » Tue, Aug 21, 2012, 1:23 AM UTC

gruseom wrote: post #275

_ea1k wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds a bit "No True Scotsman" to me. Most commercial projects that I've seen eventually grapple with the same sorts of issues that you mention. When they've faced diverse deployment environments, the results have often been worse than autoconfigure, from what I've seen. I guess that's because they aren't cathedrals, since the businesses behind them were focusing on market-demands instead of whatever it is that…

Half of this thread is unfortunate terminological noise, but phk did specify what he means by "cathedral" – software governed by a coherent design vision – and Windows and Office are not only not that, they are the poster children for not that. The words "cathedral" vs. "bazaar" have obviously gotten too vague for people to meaningfully argue about. But "coherent design vision" has a much clearer meaning, and an enor…

Once again, you're veering into "No True Cathedral" territory here.

The UNIX design philosophy -- small utilities loosely joined into a coherent whole -- is a coherent vision for a platform, under the definition you've repeated. And the Microsoft Office design philosophy, if what you're saying is true, is a bazaar because it's "incoherent."

If the UNIX ecosystem is a Cathedral and the Windows ecosystem is a Bazaar, I think we can safely say that you're not using the words that way the classic essay used them, and that the definitions you're using are malleable enough that any argument about aesthetics could bend and twist them into synonyms for "stuff I like" and "stuff that annoys me."

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#314

Post by gruseom » Tue, Aug 21, 2012, 1:43 AM UTC

eaton wrote: post #313

gruseom wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half of this thread is unfortunate terminological noise, but phk did specify what he means by "cathedral" – software governed by a coherent design vision – and Windows and Office are not only not that, they are the poster children for not that. The words "cathedral" vs. "bazaar" have obviously gotten too vague for people to meaningfully argue about. But "coherent design vision" has a much clearer meaning, and an enor…

Once again, you're veering into "No True Cathedral" territory here. The UNIX design philosophy -- small utilities loosely joined into a coherent whole -- is a coherent vision for a platform, under the definition you've repeated. And the Microsoft Office design philosophy, if what you're saying is true, is a bazaar because it's "incoherent." If the UNIX ecosystem is a Cathedral and the Windows ecosystem is a Bazaar, I…

Well, as I meant my comment to convey, I don't think "cathedral" and "bazaar" are well defined, so most of the disagreement in this thread is just crosstalk. We can argue about what the original essay meant, but I don't find that very interesting. Software design on the other hand interests me very much. I don't have any problem provisionally accepting phk's definition of "cathedral" in order to hear his thoughts about design, most of which strike me as sensible.

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#315

Post by wglb » Tue, Aug 21, 2012, 1:46 AM UTC

wonderzombie wrote: post #283

wglb wrote: post #172

A very thought-provoking article. (Been programming for pay since 1966 here.) A lot of the commentary seems to be confusing the waterfall model with the idea of the cathedral. Another way to make this point is to note how few programmers these days read Dijkstra, or Knuth's TAOCP. (Knuth would have us believe that even he doesn't read it. See Coders At Work.) Among other things, Dijkstra taught understanding the enti…

So if I wanted to start reading Dijkstra, what's the best place to start?

His hand-written notes are here http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/. One biting example is http://www.smaldone.com.ar/documentos/ewd/EWD707_pretty.pdf.

His Discipline of Programming http://www.amazon.com/Discipline-Programming-Edsger-W-Dijkst...

There are some here http://cs-exhibitions.uni-klu.ac.at/index.php?id=31 that might overlap with the texas ones. One famous one is about the cruelty of teaching computer programming: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd10xx/EWD1036.PDF.

His wikipedia page has links to a number of his seminal ideas.

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#316

Post by fusiongyro » Tue, Aug 21, 2012, 3:39 AM UTC

r00fus wrote: post #296

pmjordan wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for the gp, but I certainly would still be on Snow Leopard if development for the current version of iOS was still supported on it. I'm now seriously considering switching back to Linux as a desktop OS as I hardly do any iOS work anymore. (I've rather fallen out of love with that platform too as it's pretty clear that the only objective is selling me a new iPad+iPhone every year as this year's iOS alway…

As someone who's been on OSX since Panther, I think you may have a slightly rose-tinted view of the past - lots of stuff in OSX has been improved - I remember pretty horrible kernel panics in 10.4 and userland issues in 10.5 that no longer exist since 10.6/10.7 (or have yet to show themselves). Driver support from vendors is vastly improved, and overall, though I agree that quality has been a bit hit-or-miss, the ove…

I've been here since 10.2 and IMO the only great releases of OS X were Panther and Snow Leopard, though Panther did begin the whole idiotic metal UI thing. Maybe 10.9 will rock?

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#317

Post by snogglethorpe » Tue, Aug 21, 2012, 5:10 AM UTC

npsimons wrote: post #295

flatline3 wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An example: libkse was an attempt to implement M:N thread scheduling. This is something that can, in theory, provide significant benefits over 1:1 thread scheduling, but in practice, is extremely complicated to implement and has fallen out of favor across the board: Solaris abandoned the approach in Solaris 9, and FreeBSD abandoned it in (IIRC) FreeBSD 7. Concurrent to libkse, libthr was developed by David Xu, and wa…

Thank you for actually dignifying my reply with a reply :) While it's been years since I mucked about in Linux kernel space, I always remember it as being a very open and egalitarian community. Although I never made the attempt to contribute to any of the BSDs, I got the impression that they were much less open to newer contributors and divergences from "accepted wisdom" (this could be put more politely as being more…

> I always remember it as being a very open and egalitarian community

It definitely is, in my experience. Most importantly, despite the obvious presence of "celebrities," even completely unknown people can jump into the middle of a conversation on an important topic, and if they have their shit together, will be accorded pretty much instant respect and be treated as an equal. There's very little sense of "needing to pay one's dues."

But you definitely have to have your shit together. If you don't, you will be quickly eviscerated.

It's really rather nice, especially compared to many dev communities where there's often much more sense of entrenched factions.

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#318

Post by snogglethorpe » Tue, Aug 21, 2012, 5:20 AM UTC

flatline3 wrote: post #201

Sharlin wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why you need a curated package repository. I don't have to even know that "dependencies" exist to use Debian or Ubuntu; the package manager is nice enough to inform me that it determined that these-and-these other packages are required to install the package I wanted, and that it's now going to automatically install them for me, but that's just details that could be easily abstracted out.

Curated package repositories are just a band-aid on the disaster. They improve things by centralizing the ridiculous and unnecessary cost of dealing with the mess. It would be better to simply not have that cost.

Eh? The OP here was lauding the ipad as some sort of "solution" to the "mess," but Apple's app-store is pretty much the purest and most absurdly restricted example of a "curated package repository" around!

Debian's (and Ubuntu's, etc) package repositories are a breath of freedom and flexibility by comparison...

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#319

Post by snogglethorpe » Tue, Aug 21, 2012, 5:48 AM UTC

brlewis wrote: post #234

tedunangst wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a world where software is designed by cathedrals, there is no need for autoconf. You read the POSIX spec and write software that conforms to it.

That is true. But the article decries autoconf's implementation, not just the need for it. It implies that cathedral designers would never implement it, or if they did implement it, do a better job.

I suppose this is the essence, because however much he may chaff at autoconf's implementation (and it surely is ugly), it actually works pretty well. Users (in this case, "user" = "developer") never see the ugliness for the most part.

With more open development communities there are tradeoffs, but often the result is that you can do stuff you simply wouldn't have the manpower to do in closed communities.

I think most of us would love it if every library and tool we used was pretty and elegant, but in the end, it's often better to have something, however much you'd ideally wish for it to be prettier.

Morever, a community in which different components are often the result of disparate teams with different thinking probably results in more attention paid to robust and simple interfaces between them, simply because that's the only way you can get everything to work. Systems composed of heterogeneous components with robust and simple interfaces between them, are, I think, a good thing. I suspect they tend to be more future proof than systems with everything designed by one person from the top down, because in the end, change is inevitable, so having to deal with heterogeneity from the beginning is an advantage.

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#320

Post by snprbob86 » Tue, Aug 21, 2012, 5:58 AM UTC

phkamp wrote: post #140

peterwwillis wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cool. Now if only FOSS would adopt a non-insane way of installing software...

100% agreement from here. Andoids idea of a uid per app is a good place to start.

Part of me wonders if git provides a hint here... What about a sha1 hash per app?