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UsesThis: Rob Pike

rob.pike.usesthis.com

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Re: UsesThis: Rob Pike

#61

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

nnq wrote: post #60
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I don't know about you, but many of my files are on my website, and my website is tracked by Git (on my PC, on my server, and on GitHub).

...I know, we geeks have this already as we use dvcs for all sorts of stuff other than code too (like my text editor's settings etc.) ...but most other non IT professionals using computers (doctors, physicists, most non-software engineers etc.) don't do this and are pretty far from using things this way ...they are more likely to be "fished into" cloud solutions that will have them "hanging from the cloud (someone el…

Well, someone just needs to make a file storage-oriented Git client.

Re: UsesThis: Rob Pike

#62

Post by icebraining »

nnq wrote: post #48

The whole "everything in the cloud", "let someone else worry about storage" view, at least the way he promotes them, are more like VCS than let's say Git (or pick another DVCS)... you have a conceptual "central" point of failure, even if this "point" is a network of servers distributed around the world. I want STORAGE ON EVERY DEVICE (not volatile!), and and automatic system to sync it with all my other devices, WITH…

Frankly, I can't understand how can you criticize Pike for that. That's exactly what he wants:

  When I was on Plan 9, everything was connected and uniform. Now
  everything isn't connected, just connected to the cloud, which
  isn't the same thing.
By the way, try Joey Hess' git-annex, now with the assistant. It's just that: a sync and merge system for all your files, which can automatically sync up just about anything (computers, USB drives, cloud services, etc) and doesn't rely on central services (the Assistant will use XMPP to broadcast messages between clients, and then they connect directly to each other).

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/joeyh/git-annex-assistan...

Re: UsesThis: Rob Pike

#63

Post by icebraining »

Evbn wrote: post #46
Uhhrrr wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, he does work for a cloud provider. Also, he might just have a lot of faith in encryption (although he doesn't mention it).

Encryption? In the cloud? Only if you deploy your own app stack.

Encrypt locally, push to the cloud. See: Tarsnap.

Re: UsesThis: Rob Pike

#64

Post by sturadnidge »

I don't think his phone system analogy is correct. Yes, you can pick up any phone and make a call, but you can't receive a call to 'your' number from any phone. i.e. there is still state associated with the phone network, and landlines are not portable in the same sense that mobiles and laptops are.

Re: UsesThis: Rob Pike

#65

Post by lucian1900 »

nnq wrote: post #58
justincormack wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the CouchDB model. It is very appealing...

in a narrow sense... yet I've always wondered why people don't choose the master-master model of doing things more often...

Because it's hard to do, and even harder to do right. You at least need immutable data and versioning, and you still have to do something about conflicts.

Re: UsesThis: Rob Pike

#66

Post by wyclif »

mdonahoe wrote: post #15

If you haven't seen acme in action, it is pretty crazy and interesting. Basically it makes heavy use of the mouse, and any typed word can be invoked like a command. Here is a tutorial. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP1xVpMPn8M

The mousing is what lost me. I love vim because you don't have to deal with the mouse at all.

Re: UsesThis: Rob Pike

#67

Post by fafner »

I'm a bit surprised that he is happy with a Mac Book. His editor acme requires three mouse buttons and Apple is designed for one mouse button use. Does he use an external mouse all the time?

And I'm a bit disappointed that he's not using Plan9. With the current ease of VMs there are no driver and installation issues and he could move the snapshot around.

Re: UsesThis: Rob Pike

#68

Post by cokernel_hacker »

p9idf wrote: post #41
cokernel_hacker wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

>[Plan 9 exists] because the status quo is bad and something must be done . That's a strange way to describe research and experimentation (though not strictly incorrect). >I just wished they focused on making the mainstream better Plan 9 predates all of today's mainstream operating systems.

> That's a strange way to describe research and experimentation (though not strictly incorrect).

Many of the modern OS research papers that I have read take an existing solution and mess with it. As an example, many file system papers take ext[34] or btrfs and do something to them (if we want to debate this statement, we can). I see this with replacement algorithms, packet schedulers, etc. Much experimentation happens but it is usually in the context of Linux or FreeBSD or some other popular existing solution these days.

There are papers that buck this more conventional approach like barrelfish and singularity and exokernels and L4 etc. etc. etc.

I do not think they are the status quo and I am/was not saying that plan9 is a bad thing, let me be clear on that.

>Plan 9 predates all of today's mainstream operating systems.

This is said with enough certainty without being true that I am allergic to it. All? Plan 9 started in the late 80's [1] OS X/iOS is a mach derivative which is circa 1985. The NT OS/2 project which begat modern Windows was started in 1988. BSD? All descendants of BSD which first released in 1977. Rob Pike complains about BSD's "cat -v" in the early 80's.

Maybe you are using "predate" with a different connotation but I don't know which. At the very best* it co-existed with the others.

[1] http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/9.html

Re: UsesThis: Rob Pike

#69

Post by samuel »

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... :-/

Which it's far more interesting, though.

Re: UsesThis: Rob Pike

#70

Post by cturner »

I like the no-local-storage dream. But what about when you're at the airport or the hotel network is broken or on holiday in indochina, and want to do some hacking? There's probably no network, or if there is it'll be expensive, slow and unreliable. Though I struggle with git, I love it that you can easily keep a tree pulled (even if you don't actively use it), and use that when you need it.
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