There is something magical about Firefox OS • Hacker News Board

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#61

Post by nandemo » Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 12:16 PM UTC

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #30

Mozilla seem almost apologetic about Firefox OS. "aiming at middle market" "performs well on low end hardware" I think this is a mistake in positioning - this is still an expensive piece of hardware for most of the world (50 USD is not low-end if minimum wage in Brazil is 322 USD /mth) Instead this has the potential to be "the best" phone in most emerging markets - the most desireable OS, because it can appeal to the…

> (50 USD is not low-end if minimum wage in Brazil is 322 USD /mth)

That's not true.

First of all, low-end refers to the range of the product. A 50-USD cell phone is low-end because there aren't many models that cost less than that (modulo subsidies etc) just like a U$15k new car is low-end, notwithstanding the fact that relatively few people can afford one in Brazil.

Besides, the bulk of households in Brazil earn more than the minimum wage. C class in the graph below corresponds to people in households earning around 2~4x minimum wage. While in developed countries these people would be definitely considered "poor", in Brazil they're basically "lower-middle class". And yes, many of them can afford low-end cell phones.

http://www.asiacomentada.com.br/2011/03/melhoria-da-distribu...

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#62

Post by coffeeaddicted » Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 12:18 PM UTC

robhawkes wrote: post #47

coffeeaddicted wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Constant framerate is the thing that matters most to games. 60 fps or just 30 fps doesn't matter as much as that it's constant. You can even play a racer for example at 15 fps, but you fly out the curve the moment a 60 FPS game has a 250ms freeze at the wrong moment. Just mentioning this as it's something a lot of people not doing games are missing (and maybe one of the main reasons why c/c++ still are dominant in ga…

Yup, you're completely right… it's the constant frame-rate of a game that's important. And even if it's not truly 'constant', it should always stay above 30FPS. You probably shouldn't code a game to be tied to the frame-rate though. This is exactly what my job is at the moment, testing games and monitoring FPS across these games on various devices and platforms. I'm confident that JavaScript is more than capable to h…

Hm, yeah - my point is that FPS isn't as important as the longest frame. You can have 100 FPS when 99 of them are really fast while the last one is stuck for nearly a second :-) Or said otherwise - for a game measuring average over a second is already a too long time-frame. It's nice as a simple feedback number for users, but it's not sufficient for smooth gameplay.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#63

Post by hermanhermitage » Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 12:20 PM UTC

Terrific stuff.

I still think there is a use case for a static C like language (with explicit memory management) for some kernels.

The same way that WebGL has HLSL, it would be nice if there was a WebCPU API with C as the 'shader' language.

(Alternative is LLJS approach - but that has other issues).

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#64

Post by newman314 » Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 12:23 PM UTC

robhawkes wrote: post #33

kgabis wrote: post #29

This looks like a terrible idea for a mobile OS, where every cycle should count. What about battery life? I think that for now, and foreseeable future, the only reasonable choice for mobile devices are native code based apps and system.

Battery life is very, very good. I can leave this thing on for days and it's still running. Now obviously that's not running too much in the background but there is no reason why a JavaScript phone would have a detrimental effect on battery life. You should try it out sometime, it's really not 'terrible' when you get hands on. But your opinion is one I see a lot and we're hoping to change it in the future, slowly ;)

Have you made any actual power measurements using say powertop etc?

webOS can be left on for days and days IF you turn all the radios off, underclock, undervolt...

Given that most smartphones last for at most a day with actual usage (not sitting there in sleep mode), I would like to see more quantification as to what the usage pattern is that enables you to leave it for days and days.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#65

Post by newman314 » Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 12:27 PM UTC

zacharyvoase wrote: post #4

> In short, Firefox OS is about taking the technologies behind the Web, like JavaScript, and using them to produce an entire mobile operating system. Just let that sink in for a moment — it's a mobile OS powered by JavaScript! This kind of happened before: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_webOS What went wrong? Well, apparently[1] there were some big performance issues—and IIUC Gecko has some of those already. [1]: ht…

webOS also suffered from execution issues (as a company). They were forever rewriting things under the hood as a fair number of things were duct-taped together.

For example, they moved from a Java based solution to JS using v8 from webOS 1.x to 2.x.

Hopefully, Firefox OS will not suffer from the same issues. And I would certainly like to hear more about the under-the-hood architecture. It's pretty eye candy but things like power management quickly jump to the forefront when you actually try to use the device as a phone on a regular basis.

As far as the webOS performance issues go, it was less the hardware and more the fact that most of the software were not optimized and shipped with an ENORMOUS amount logging turned on. Put simply, Palm essentially did a "make debug_build" and shipped it.

Not trying to be harsh, just what I have observed from poking around webOS.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#66

Post by PommeDeTerre » Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 12:27 PM UTC

h2s wrote: post #55

You could set your watch by the HN response to a story like this. Pure doom, gloom and naysaying. Smartphones these days live and die by their app ecosystem. I would love to be working on mobile apps, but for the expense of buying an iPhone, an Android phone and a Windows phone, plus licenses for software to develop for all three. Not to mention the daunting prospect of dealing with Objective C, Java and C# simultane…

I'm confused by your statement about "the daunting prospect of dealing with Objective C, Java and C# simultaneously. This is a ludicrous prospect for a lone developer."

Perhaps that's true for a hobbyist. But any professional software developer should already be familiar with at least one (if not all) of those languages, and should be able to pick up the others with very little work.

Once you know C#, for instance, you'll quickly see that Java is essentially a subset of it these days. Sure, there are differences, but they're quite minor. The same goes for Objective-C, to some extent. The syntax is a bit different, but most of the concepts are similar enough. Even the most commonly-used libraries for each don't actually differ that much in practice.

In fact, many developers with experience in industry will have already had to use multiple languages at the same time throughout their careers. They'll already know how to work on several projects simultaneously, using several languages, and many more libraries.

In fact, I'd suspect that most of these professionals would feel very handicapped if they were forced to use JavaScript for all development. JavaScript has proven time and time again to not be a good language for anything but short scripts. Languages like C++, Java, C#, and Objective-C have core features that make large-scale, distributed software development possible. JavaScript lacks these, and anyone working on a large JavaScript code base will know the pains that arise.

It won't be good for Firefox OS if only the most inept developers are attracted to it. That's not the kind of ecosystem that produces useful applications.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#67

Post by pfisch » Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 12:28 PM UTC

h2s wrote: post #55

You could set your watch by the HN response to a story like this. Pure doom, gloom and naysaying. Smartphones these days live and die by their app ecosystem. I would love to be working on mobile apps, but for the expense of buying an iPhone, an Android phone and a Windows phone, plus licenses for software to develop for all three. Not to mention the daunting prospect of dealing with Objective C, Java and C# simultane…

You can use C# for all three with monotouch. But honestly it doesn't matter much. Objective C is very similar to C# which is very similar to Java. It is really just slightly different syntax.

And you can always just embed a webview and use html + js if you really want, though that is much harder to work with and less versatile imo.

That is the reason I am not cheering for firefox OS. Why on earth would I want to be limited by html and javascript. Show me a high end game that is written in html 5, or really even a mid tier one. This does not include webgl.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#68

Post by pfisch » Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 12:29 PM UTC

PommeDeTerre wrote: post #66

h2s wrote: post #55

You could set your watch by the HN response to a story like this. Pure doom, gloom and naysaying. Smartphones these days live and die by their app ecosystem. I would love to be working on mobile apps, but for the expense of buying an iPhone, an Android phone and a Windows phone, plus licenses for software to develop for all three. Not to mention the daunting prospect of dealing with Objective C, Java and C# simultane…

I'm confused by your statement about "the daunting prospect of dealing with Objective C, Java and C# simultaneously. This is a ludicrous prospect for a lone developer." Perhaps that's true for a hobbyist. But any professional software developer should already be familiar with at least one (if not all) of those languages, and should be able to pick up the others with very little work. Once you know C#, for instance, y…

Everything this person said is the truth.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#69

Post by ajanuary » Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 12:29 PM UTC

praptak wrote: post #48

robhawkes wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd be surprised at how well JavaScript performs when allowed.

The scary part of JavaScript is not performance, it is the hell of inconsistency. '1' - 0 is 1. Guess what '1' + 0 is? Nope, it's '10'. Crockford's JavaScript truth table is mind-bending. On top of that, semicolon insertion.

Type coercion and asi are probably the least troublesome odd parts of js I encounter day to day.

I find the weird scoping rules around 'this' and the verbosity of anonymous functions far worse. [1]

(Sincerely and non-rhetorically) Do you really find the former more annoying than the latter? I see a lot of people using those examples to call out JS inappropriateness for development, but it seems like they're focusing on the wrong things to me.

[1] I know they can be fixed by using a language that compiles down to JS. So can the parent's criticisms.

Re: There is something magical about Firefox OS

#70

Post by hessenwolf » Thu, Sep 13, 2012, 12:31 PM UTC

h2s wrote: post #55

You could set your watch by the HN response to a story like this. Pure doom, gloom and naysaying. Smartphones these days live and die by their app ecosystem. I would love to be working on mobile apps, but for the expense of buying an iPhone, an Android phone and a Windows phone, plus licenses for software to develop for all three. Not to mention the daunting prospect of dealing with Objective C, Java and C# simultane…

"Smartphones live and die by their app ecosystem"

Have you got a source on this? I am just curious. I love my smartphone, but I basically use whatsapp and the internetm, mp3, video, and fbreader 99.5% of the time.