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UsesThis: Rob Pike

rob.pike.usesthis.com

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Re: UsesThis: Rob Pike

#31

Post by cokernel_hacker »

codewright wrote: post #25

A surprisingly ideological interview. Combined with my run-ins with the go-nuts, I have to imagine there's some sort of general cultural coding cohort I've not fully understood yet. This intersection between an obsession with minimalism of a particular sort and dispossession is unknown to me. Seems common to the Go programmers I talk to.

My general take from observing their culture is dogmatic vs pragmatic. plan9 and go are dogmatic, they exist because the status quo is bad and something must be done.

This is not to say their ideas are bad! Some of them are great but many of the great ones are brought into the mainstream thru unix (procfs, utf-8) and C (unnamed substructures) :)

I just wished they focused on making the mainstream better instead of this more indirect route...

Re: UsesThis: Rob Pike

#32

Post by mrpollo » 

  "The world should provide me my computing environment and maintain it for me and make it available everywhere."
Reminds me of the mini glass that Tony Stark is carrying with him all around the 2nd Iron Man movie, see here: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/9694286/iron-man-computer.jpeg

In the movie Tony (Iron Man) can control the infrastructure around him with this device, just like Rob Pike described.

Re: UsesThis: Rob Pike

#34

Post by pjmlp »

n8agrin wrote: post #3

I want no local storage anywhere near me other than maybe caches. No disks, no state, my world entirely in the network. Storage needs to be backed up and maintained, which should be someone else's problem, one I'm happy to pay to have them solve. Also, storage on one machine means that machine is different from another machine. I'm always shocked that this hasn't happened faster. I've expected Dropbox, Amazon, Google…

Because there are sane people that prefer to take care of their precious data, instead of giving it to strangers.

Re: UsesThis: Rob Pike

#35

Post by AngryParsley »

andrewflnr wrote: post #21

I can't get behind the idea of every computer I interact with being a dumb terminal. I don't want to assume I'll always have a connection to the mother machine. Even in some ideal world where I always have a high speed connection that never fails, can you guarantee that the server itself won't go down? Not really. I would like to see a nice balance: I basically work locally, and anything I do is synced ASAP to "the c…

I agree. In addition to the concerns you brought up, I see other issues with Pike's proposal. If computers are infrastructure, I'm forced to deal with whatever computers others have. This is a problem, because most people don't use computers as much as me and aren't willing to spend as much on them. I'd rather carry a maxed-out 11" Air everywhere than put up with my friends' and relatives' computers. (In fact, I do this.)

Pike doesn't address security either. Would you log into Gmail on a public computer? Would you enter your credit card info or visit your bank's website? I sure wouldn't. Phones from 20 years ago didn't have any storage or computational abilities, so these security concerns didn't exist for them.

While I'm a huge fan of cloud-based storage and synchronization, there are just too many issues with using untrusted computers everywhere I go. Maybe it was due to the interview format, but I'm surprised such an intelligent, technical thinker managed to avoid discussing the downsides of his proposal.

Re: UsesThis: Rob Pike

#36

Post by waferbaby »

statictype wrote: post #30
waferbaby wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aw, sorry about that. I guess it's a nice break from the normality, maybe? :)

I liked it. It's nice to see a guy's thoughts on how he thinks computing should be. Especially if its someone like Rob Pike. (Better than the usual stream of Macbook-Pro-with-24"-Cinema-Display which is what everyone seems to be using)

Yup! Agreed.

Re: UsesThis: Rob Pike

#37

Post by ryanstewart »

simonsarris wrote: post #5
n8agrin wrote: post #3

I want no local storage anywhere near me other than maybe caches. No disks, no state, my world entirely in the network. Storage needs to be backed up and maintained, which should be someone else's problem, one I'm happy to pay to have them solve. Also, storage on one machine means that machine is different from another machine. I'm always shocked that this hasn't happened faster. I've expected Dropbox, Amazon, Google…

But Google has moved into that space! The general populace just didn't care too much.[1] Chromebooks do exactly what he's describing right off the bat. Every Chromebook you own dies in a fire? Unbox a new one, boot up, everything is identical. -------------------- [1] I think part of the reason for this is that just as nobody wants to think about things like death, NOBODY wants to think about data loss and prevention…

This may be a matter of semantics but it seemed to me he pretty clearly avoided the word "cloud" in favor of "the network".

Based on his post it seems like he's looking for something that's a bit more robust from an infrastructure standpoint than what most cloud offerings are today. Eg, not "stitching together little microcomputers with HTTPS and ssh".

That appears to be one reason he's not buying that people have moved into the space.

Re: UsesThis: Rob Pike

#38

Post by babarock »

epaga wrote: post #23

Slight critique here - I feel like he's using this to push an agenda rather than just telling us in detail what tools and software he uses to get his job done. He mentions a few things but in far less detail than anyone else I've read on usesthis. Instead he gives paragraph after paragraph of "world view" about moving things to the cloud...interesting, yes, but not what I'm after when I read usesthis posts... :-/

What? No! He's not pushing for a move to the cloud. He actually did criticize the way we're building the cloud today:

> "This is 2012 and we're still stitching together little microcomputers with HTTPS and ssh and calling it revolutionary. I sorely miss the unified system view of the world we had at Bell Labs, and the way things are going that seems unlikely to come back any time soon."

To understand what he's talking about, keep in mind that Pike was a lead engineer on Plan9, a project aiming at creating the exact environment he's describing. And although the project never left the lab, it did affect the lives of the scientists working there. There are many reasons why Plan9 never went mainstream, but one thing is sure it was not technical inferiority.

I don't think Pike is pushing for any agenda. I tried Plan9, and I see what he's talking about. Lack of widespread support and the relatively small number of available apps make it difficult to be the "primary" OS I use, but the design concepts like "everything is a file", union mounts or 9P are amazing and work like he describes.

When a world renown OS scientist is asked about his "ideal setup", what answer would you expect? "I wish I could get the latest version of MacOSX and the newest chip by Nvidia"??

Re: UsesThis: Rob Pike

#40

Post by negativity »

n8agrin wrote: post #3

I want no local storage anywhere near me other than maybe caches. No disks, no state, my world entirely in the network. Storage needs to be backed up and maintained, which should be someone else's problem, one I'm happy to pay to have them solve. Also, storage on one machine means that machine is different from another machine. I'm always shocked that this hasn't happened faster. I've expected Dropbox, Amazon, Google…

First Order of Business: The thought police have to weed out the service providers that won't play ball. We can't have any rogue independent thought enablers like Kim Dotcom floating around.

So for now, while there are enough bit players and small-time shops floating around, people are still wary about losing their data to fly-by-night operations.

Unreliable SSD's and Stuxnet infected flash drives have shaken user confidence in personal storage, but not enough. And it still doesn't seem possible to create enough doubt in HDDs, while selling the con job of cloud storage. Also, there're enough data breaches floating around, but most people just shrug, and whether they understand what it means, or even care is hard to discern...

Anyway, once all the captains of industry are on board, with their poster children like Pike parroting the party line, and when the all the "OMG LYFETIEM DATA GUARANTEES" seem more reliable than the normal hard drive warranties available to the common prole, it'll finally be possible to memory-hole the fuck out of anyone that steps out of line. (I'm looking at you, Mr. Assange)

C'mon man. The name of the game is "Boiling Frogs". It has to be done slowly, and carefully. I shouldn't have to explain this.

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