Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (2000) • Hacker News Board

Re: Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (2000)

#11

Post by bluGill » Thu, May 23, 2019, 4:18 PM UTC

wyldfire wrote: post #3

tlb wrote: post #2

The last 19 years of systems software research have not refuted Rob's thesis. Industry has made incremental progress, academia has written papers but not built much that people want to use. Despite massive increases in graphics processing power, desktop UIs are still about the same as in 2000, just with more shininess. And the number one thing that could have gotten better in the last 19 years but didn't: security.

> And the number one thing that could have gotten better in the last 19 years but didn't: security. This is an astonishing claim: what makes you think it hasn't gotten better? It's gotten a LOT better since 2000.

Both statements are true. Security in 2000 was worse by a lot, but the need for security was also less. While there were viruses that deleted all your files, they were very primitive compared to what is done today.

Re: Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (2000)

#12

Post by jascii » Thu, May 23, 2019, 4:20 PM UTC

wyldfire wrote: post #3

tlb wrote: post #2

The last 19 years of systems software research have not refuted Rob's thesis. Industry has made incremental progress, academia has written papers but not built much that people want to use. Despite massive increases in graphics processing power, desktop UIs are still about the same as in 2000, just with more shininess. And the number one thing that could have gotten better in the last 19 years but didn't: security.

> And the number one thing that could have gotten better in the last 19 years but didn't: security. This is an astonishing claim: what makes you think it hasn't gotten better? It's gotten a LOT better since 2000.

I wonder what makes you say that? There is more social focus on security, however that seems more a consequence of the pervasiveness of computing in our society then in fundamental progress in our systems-thinking. As far as I can tell, the basic security models have not changed much since the late 60's.

Re: Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (2000)

#13

Post by SCHiM » Thu, May 23, 2019, 4:23 PM UTC

0xdada wrote: post #9

wbl wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We live in a world where the ratio of computers to people is greater then one and still don't have great isolation between peograms.

We have pretty great isolation between programs on iOS and Android.

I hear you, but security wise this point is countered by the fact that every (n-1) iOS operating system has a public lpe exploit available. A user might not be able to jailbreak their idevice, but a hacker can.

Re: Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (2000)

#14

Post by eeZah7Ux » Thu, May 23, 2019, 4:24 PM UTC

cperciva wrote: post #7

Virtualization. Capabilities. Kernel-bypass networking. Static code analysis. Verified-pointer microarchitectures. Coverage-guided fuzzing. Systems software research has come a long way since 2000.

Virtualization and static code analysis existed before 2000.

Granted - the tooling improved.

Re: Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (2000)

#15

Post by GuiA » Thu, May 23, 2019, 4:24 PM UTC

tlb wrote: post #2

The last 19 years of systems software research have not refuted Rob's thesis. Industry has made incremental progress, academia has written papers but not built much that people want to use. Despite massive increases in graphics processing power, desktop UIs are still about the same as in 2000, just with more shininess. And the number one thing that could have gotten better in the last 19 years but didn't: security.

> desktop UIs are still about the same as in 2000, just with more shininess.

That is because the majority of people fundamentally do the same things with computers than they did 20 years ago. Browse the web, edit pictures, videos, put together presentations, document layout, spreadsheets, etc.

Of course now your home videos are in 4K instead of 320p, and webpages are 10MB of JS instead of 10k of text... but these are changes in scale, not in kind.

However, shiny features is what gets people attracted to your platform, so we get shininess (never mind if functionality actually gets lost in the process).

The perfect illustration of this for me is George RR Martin, a professional writer of indisputable success, doing all of his writing work on a 1980s workstation with WordStar 4.

Re: Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (2000)

#16

Post by joker3 » Thu, May 23, 2019, 4:24 PM UTC

tlb wrote: post #2

The last 19 years of systems software research have not refuted Rob's thesis. Industry has made incremental progress, academia has written papers but not built much that people want to use. Despite massive increases in graphics processing power, desktop UIs are still about the same as in 2000, just with more shininess. And the number one thing that could have gotten better in the last 19 years but didn't: security.

What do UIs have to do with systems research? And given how much easier it is to use an interface that you're already familiar with, isn't it a good thing that they've mostly stayed the same?

Re: Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (2000)

#17

Post by tlb » Thu, May 23, 2019, 4:26 PM UTC

i80and wrote: post #10

tlb wrote: post #2

The last 19 years of systems software research have not refuted Rob's thesis. Industry has made incremental progress, academia has written papers but not built much that people want to use. Despite massive increases in graphics processing power, desktop UIs are still about the same as in 2000, just with more shininess. And the number one thing that could have gotten better in the last 19 years but didn't: security.

> And the number one thing that could have gotten better in the last 19 years but didn't: security. In 2000, people mostly still used Windows 9x. A single-user system with no sandboxing and no built-in firewall.

He's talking about research, so you have to look at the state of the art, not what the masses were still using. In 2000 I used FreeBSD, which was pretty good. It had jails [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeBSD_jail] by then, which a reasonable person might still prefer to modern Linux containers.

Re: Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (2000)

#18

Post by eeZah7Ux » Thu, May 23, 2019, 4:26 PM UTC

tlb wrote: post #2

The last 19 years of systems software research have not refuted Rob's thesis. Industry has made incremental progress, academia has written papers but not built much that people want to use. Despite massive increases in graphics processing power, desktop UIs are still about the same as in 2000, just with more shininess. And the number one thing that could have gotten better in the last 19 years but didn't: security.

The disconnect between research and development* has been constantly increasing.

* "development" as in making a technology usable, not software development

Re: Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (2000)

#19

Post by virgilp » Thu, May 23, 2019, 4:27 PM UTC

tlb wrote: post #2

The last 19 years of systems software research have not refuted Rob's thesis. Industry has made incremental progress, academia has written papers but not built much that people want to use. Despite massive increases in graphics processing power, desktop UIs are still about the same as in 2000, just with more shininess. And the number one thing that could have gotten better in the last 19 years but didn't: security.

> academia has written papers but not built much that people want to use.

Does "started in academia" not count? Because that'd give you easy counter-examples, e.g. Scala, Spark.

Re: Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (2000)

#20

Post by jascii » Thu, May 23, 2019, 4:30 PM UTC

cperciva wrote: post #7

Virtualization. Capabilities. Kernel-bypass networking. Static code analysis. Verified-pointer microarchitectures. Coverage-guided fuzzing. Systems software research has come a long way since 2000.

Virtualization: See VMS (1977) Kernel-bypass networking: See microkernels (1967) Need I go on?