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Writing a new X server from scratch would have been an enormous undertaking two decades ago. (Keith Packard did Kdrive but he’s literally the foremost expert on X11.) Part of what motivated Wayland was the difficulty of maintaining the X server. How can we reconcile AI coding a functional X server with the assertions that AI is overrated and we’re in a bubble?
Writing a new X server from scratch would have been an enormous undertaking two decades ago. (Keith Packard did Kdrive but he’s literally the foremost expert on X11.) Part of what motivated Wayland was the difficulty of maintaining the X server. How can we reconcile AI coding a functional X server with the assertions that AI is overrated and we’re in a bubble?
And rewriting POCs of existing projects will not necessarily increase productivity
Maybe development generally was getting unnecessarily complex, and people were cutting corners. And now with AI they will be able to do it better. Which possibly wouldn't directly justify the amount invested AI
I don't understand the desire for an X11 rewrite. X.org is absolutely terrible, I understand starting from scratch, but wouldn't it make far more sense to make a backwards compatible X12?
I actually started an "x12" in Ruby (yes...) It took Claude less than a day to get it to the point where Firefox runs and plays YouTube videos at decent speed - modern x apps does mostly client side rendering so the X11 server is rarely on the hot path. And then I started backfilling a lot of things I initially didn't want, because it turns out it takes very little code and it's fun to get xterm, twm, xeyes working a…
I think an X12 would be X11 with a cleaned up codebase, removed features, and additions of modern features that Wayland or Quartz have without compromising compatibility more than necessary
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I actually started an "x12" in Ruby (yes...) It took Claude less than a day to get it to the point where Firefox runs and plays YouTube videos at decent speed - modern x apps does mostly client side rendering so the X11 server is rarely on the hot path. And then I started backfilling a lot of things I initially didn't want, because it turns out it takes very little code and it's fun to get xterm, twm, xeyes working a…
Can I ask why you did it in ruby? I like ruby, don't get me wrong, but that seems pretty low on the list of languages an X12 would be written in. I think an X12 would be X11 with a cleaned up codebase, removed features, and additions of modern features that Wayland or Quartz have without compromising compatibility more than necessary
Also because I was curious if it'd be viable, and turns out its fast enough (for a low level backend I might end up pulling in Mesa and some optimized blitting code, but otherwise pure Ruby is all you need)
To me an X12 implies significant protocol changes, or it's just another X11 implementation - X11 is the protocol, not a specific implementation.
And it turns out significant protocol changes might just not be particularly worthwhile given you can run most X11 clients with a few thousand lines (including XRender, Xinerama, and other key extensions)
Instead you certainly can make savings by ditching old hardware, and not bothering to make legacy drawing modes fast. I'm not going to commit to full compatibility, so maybe the x12 label might still make sense, but gtk + qt compatibility + about a dozen simple extra drawing calls gives you most X11 clients.
Writing a new X server from scratch would have been an enormous undertaking two decades ago. (Keith Packard did Kdrive but he’s literally the foremost expert on X11.) Part of what motivated Wayland was the difficulty of maintaining the X server. How can we reconcile AI coding a functional X server with the assertions that AI is overrated and we’re in a bubble?
By refusing to use it because the BSD's are my escape from vibe coded hell
Why am I not surprised. GhostBSD seems to joyfully delve into the slop and attract the worst to FreeBSD.
Writing a new X server from scratch would have been an enormous undertaking two decades ago. (Keith Packard did Kdrive but he’s literally the foremost expert on X11.) Part of what motivated Wayland was the difficulty of maintaining the X server. How can we reconcile AI coding a functional X server with the assertions that AI is overrated and we’re in a bubble?
Since 2006, knowledge has become more available on the Internet. There is StackOverflow (for) now, and any number of developer blogs, in addition to the voluminous books published on programming. Hardware setups became more homogenous and the kernel took over handling more of graphics. Compilers, static analyzers, debuggers and testing tooling are all leagues better now. More code is published online, which can be used as learning material. Developers as a class of people have grown in numbers and experience. More mistakes in various open source software projects have been made, and recorded publicly for others to learn from.
Writing a new X server from scratch would have been an enormous undertaking two decades ago. (Keith Packard did Kdrive but he’s literally the foremost expert on X11.) Part of what motivated Wayland was the difficulty of maintaining the X server. How can we reconcile AI coding a functional X server with the assertions that AI is overrated and we’re in a bubble?
Writing a new X server from scratch would have been an enormous undertaking two decades ago. (Keith Packard did Kdrive but he’s literally the foremost expert on X11.) Part of what motivated Wayland was the difficulty of maintaining the X server. How can we reconcile AI coding a functional X server with the assertions that AI is overrated and we’re in a bubble?