A Generation Lost in the Bazaar • Hacker News Board

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#341

Post by hollerith » Tue, Aug 21, 2012, 3:57 PM UTC

caf wrote: post #328

hollerith wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>the people that wrote it weren't in a position to demand that all the UNIX-likes out there standardise their ld flags Agree, but once Linux became the dominant Unix-like, the major Linux distros like Debian and Redhat were probably in a position to replace uses of libtool in upstreams with a distro-wide standard for ld flags.

They could, but what would be the advantage? Such patches couldn't be accepted by upstream, and the Debian/Redhat source packages are mostly only built by Debian/Redhat maintainers, so would the juice be worth the squeeze?

I don't claim to know what other upstream maintainers would've done, but if I had been one in the 1990s, and Debian and Redhat had agreed on a std for ld flags, I would've announced that libtool would be removed from my project in 24 months, so other Unix-likes should get on the train.

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#342

Post by bjourne » Tue, Aug 21, 2012, 4:31 PM UTC

snogglethorpe wrote: post #330

bjourne wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No stop it! Don't defend autoconf, it is not worth it and the software does not deserve it. Users of autoconf, that is developers that try to use that POS to build their software definitely experiences its pains. It is not just that M4 is a horribly ugly, badly, inconsistent language. You also have about a million leaky caches in the build process to deal with. Autoconf rewrites the build scripts in three stages, eac…

Shrug. You don't like autoconf, great; that's clear. As a user of it, I think it's sometimes ugly, but basically fine for its intended purpose (easing portability amongst POSIX-compatible systems). [If you like Windows, you're probably outside its target audience.] CMake, SCons, etc, all have their pros and cons. They are hardly paragons of virtue though. [Yes, even as a mere "consumer" of CMake (someone who occasion…

You sound a lot like my colleagues when I tell them why I much favor dynamic languages like Ruby and Python over Java. :) They listen politely to my arguments, then shrug their shoulders and go "meh, Java works fine for me". CVS users are the same when it comes to Subversion users who are the same when it comes to Git users.

It doesn't matter for a "works fine" person how many faults their current tool has or how much smoother "your" tool solves all those problems, they won't listen. Logic doesn't work maybe because it is very hard for them to get used to something new. Maybe because if you haven't experienced any alternatives it is very hard to imagine that something could be better.

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#343

Post by sounds » Tue, Aug 21, 2012, 7:33 PM UTC

crag wrote: post #272

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…

"I suspect the objective for Lion was "make OSX look kind of like iOS and get rid of all of that GPLv3 software" and that's basically what was achieved. I guess bug-free software isn't good business, Microsoft were printing money for decades." You can say that again. Frankly, after using Mac for 10 years, this is my last one.

Just out of curiosity, would you use newer Apple hardware if you could run older OS X versions on it?

Hackintosh or something even worse (and I am with you 100% on the horrible state of OS X) -- I wouldn't want to discount the quality of the hardware.

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#344

Post by sounds » Tue, Aug 21, 2012, 7:35 PM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #340

fusiongyro wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I'm actually finding Mountain Lion much more stable than Lion or Snow Leopard. Lion had some really weird memory things and I did get multiple kernel panics in early Snow Leopard.

Ok, so who's telling the truth? Was Snow Leopard good or did it kernel panic? Is Mountain Lion stable or have users just not reported the issues yet?

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#345

Post by sounds » Tue, Aug 21, 2012, 7:41 PM UTC

spartango wrote: post #321

chimi wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of people, especially around here, eschew college education in the computer sciences, because you can get a job without it and you can build a website without it, but I really think the decline of formal education in computer programming concepts has led to a lack of cathedral thinking. Of course, I'm biased, because I have such a degree. However, when I compare what I build to what is built by a busine…

I'm not I'd like to get on either side of this argument, but I'd like to point out a steady decline in systems and operating systems (both research and teaching) across the academic world. Rob Pike wrote a polemic touching on it, and he wasn't entirely off base. This isn't to say that they don't exist, but there are a wealth of examples demonstrating the transition of major progress in those fields to companies like…

Please, what was Rob Pike's polemic? Can you share a link?

From googling around, might you be referring to:

"Systems Software Research Is Irrelevant"

http://doc.cat-v.org/bell_labs/utah2000/

And there's a little slashdot discussion:

http://interviews.slashdot.org/story/04/10/18/1153211/rob-pi...

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#346

Post by protomyth » Tue, Aug 21, 2012, 8:01 PM UTC

sounds wrote: post #344

protomyth wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm actually finding Mountain Lion much more stable than Lion or Snow Leopard. Lion had some really weird memory things and I did get multiple kernel panics in early Snow Leopard.

Ok, so who's telling the truth? Was Snow Leopard good or did it kernel panic? Is Mountain Lion stable or have users just not reported the issues yet?

I think we are both telling the truth as we saw / see it. It might come down to machine, configuration, and type of jobs.

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#347

Post by flatline3 » Tue, Aug 21, 2012, 8:15 PM UTC

snogglethorpe wrote: post #318

flatline3 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Curated Linux package repositories are all about making painful things slightly less painful, including:

- Managing complex dependency graphs. There are often incompatible changes in the nodes of the dependency graph that require wholesale updating of every node linked to the changed one.

- Managing complex installation. As per UNIX standards, the files which comprise a single software package are spread across the file system in such a way that it's effectively impossible to clean them up without a package manager properly tracking them.

Apple's "curated package repository" is something else entirely.

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#348

Post by sounds » Tue, Aug 21, 2012, 8:59 PM UTC

protomyth wrote: post #346

sounds wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, so who's telling the truth? Was Snow Leopard good or did it kernel panic? Is Mountain Lion stable or have users just not reported the issues yet?

I think we are both telling the truth as we saw / see it. It might come down to machine, configuration, and type of jobs.

Sounds reasonable to me.

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#349

Post by awongh » Wed, Aug 22, 2012, 12:43 AM UTC

It seems that people would like to think that cathedral > bazzar is like waterfall > agile, but I'd also posit that it can mean walled garden > OSS... the iphone is a beautiful object, I am also post 90's so I've never been involved with a cathedral project, but I see his point.

On the other hand, why can't I watch a flash movie on my iphone? Sometimes it'd be convenient to do that. I think it's funny that there is no engineering restriction on being able to do that, it's simply an effect of cathedral vs. bazaar culture at apple. In fact people forget that the true cathedral would be an iphone without the app store, as Jobs had originally envisioned.

I definitely don't agree with the assumption that the cathedral is always better and preferable.

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#350

Post by splicer » Wed, Aug 22, 2012, 2:11 AM UTC

pmjordan wrote: post #128

jballanc wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder why you think that? I suspect it might be related to the focus on "consumer-centric" (as opposed to geek-centric) features. That is one interesting side-effect of the bazaar model: it's great at building what the majority want. If you are trying to build something that nobody is asking for, you can't beat the cathedral model! ;-) I will tell you, though, that Snow Leopard missed its ship date by 8 months (of…

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…

My feelings exactly! I now do virtually all my development in Linux (or ssh'ed into a Linux box from my MacBook Air). I hate what OS X has become. The only thing I now find superior about OS X to Linux is that it runs Logic Pro 9 (which I can't do without); yay for vendor lock-in!