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

Re: Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (2000) [pdf]

#11

Post by musicale » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 5:54 AM UTC

Hmm, doesn't Rob Pike now work at Google, which has developed the Chrome browser, which in addition to being a successor to Netscape (mentioned in the article) is basically a complete OS and runtime environment, as well as the literal ChromeOS, Android, Fuchsia, and Kubernetes, as well as Dart, and Go (and also adopted Kotlin for Android?) Not to mention software systems for special-purpose hardware like tensorflow, quantum, etc..

Which of those are research projects and which are commercial products/projects (or both perhaps?) is left as an exercise for the reader.

Re: Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (2000) [pdf]

#12

Post by MichaelMoser123 » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 5:54 AM UTC

I think that i understand the argument, but things changed with the advent of microservices. Suddenly everything turned into a distributed system, and it is hard to cope without some understanding of the subject matter. This lecture series by Martin Kleppman has helped me quite a bit here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEAMfLPZZhE&list=PLeKd45zvjc... Also see his book 'Designing Data-Intensive Applications', which is more focused on discussing practical systems.

Re: Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (2000) [pdf]

#13

Post by quocanh » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 5:59 AM UTC

System software research sounds like it could benefit from focusing more on the systems than the software. No one is going to be building the next Linux. But they could build the ecosystem, architecture, and incentives for the next Linux to organically form. It's no longer just an engineering problem but an organizational and business one.

Re: Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (2000) [pdf]

#14

Post by mirker » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 6:01 AM UTC

Ericson2314 wrote: post #10

mirker wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the quagmires with systems research is that it makes “stuff” (performance or usability) easier for the user. Research is supposed to be “scientific”, so you need ample evidence of those claims. This is difficult to obtain for very weird systems because usability is in human-computer interaction, which is hard to measure. If it’s so weird to not be portable and you have not measured humans, it must be impractic…

Systems research has become like orthodox economics, doing various marginal empirics but missing the bigger more qualative macro picture. Maybe the megacorp that is going to hire you wants to see some benchmarks improved, but frankly, that's not what the world needs, or even what would best benefit the megacorp? Economics at least has its uncooth grandfather in Political Economy. Computer systems needs to discover it…

I agree with you, but at the same time, I think it’s easy to dismiss this whole line of thought as quacky.

It’s very hard to argue with tables and plots.

Economics has a lot of mathematical work for similar “hard science” reasons.

Re: Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (2000) [pdf]

#15

Post by bfung » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 6:06 AM UTC

In addition to things categorized as “systems research”, there’s a bunch of new stuff like IoT devices which all need their own OS and update mechanisms.

Maybe the classical “write a new OS (because we didn’t understand the economics of hardware)” is no longer the case, but there’s still plenty of research going on: unikernels, containers…

It just looks different than what it used to. Also that paper is from 20 years ago.

Re: Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (2000) [pdf]

#16

Post by openfuture » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 6:07 AM UTC

rektide wrote: post #2

Rob Pike was drinking the poison chalice well before the rest of us. He wasn't wrong, here, back, in 2000. But damn. We've seen net zero systematic gain in computing across the entire industry in TWO FUCKING DECADES. Not a single iota of gains or win. Not a single systems software change has made it into the world. Everything is dead dead dead dead. Applications claim more and more and more, networks portals & endles…

Funny, when you speak of systems and applications I think of government and companies. We're just seeing Conway's law play out across the planet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law

Re: Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (2000) [pdf]

#17

Post by tzs » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 6:44 AM UTC

> There has been much talk about component architectures but only one true success: Unix pipes. It should be possible to build interactive and distributed applications from piece parts.

Wouldn't Microsoft's COM be another success in that area? It was several years old and in widespread use in Windows at the time the article was written.

Re: Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (2000) [pdf]

#18

Post by henning » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 6:45 AM UTC

It takes a person like this to design a language like Go, whose fundamental philosophy is that people cannot and do not want to learn anything new, ever. It takes that kind of cynicism to also view hardware with disdain and horror.

Re: Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (2000) [pdf]

#19

Post by klysm » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 6:50 AM UTC

henning wrote: post #18

It takes a person like this to design a language like Go, whose fundamental philosophy is that people cannot and do not want to learn anything new, ever. It takes that kind of cynicism to also view hardware with disdain and horror.

I’m glad I’m not the only person who views the design of go through that lens. It seems to me to be firmly rooted in the belief that developers are better off with weaker tools.

Re: Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (2000) [pdf]

#20

Post by Ericson2314 » Tue, Dec 28, 2021, 6:58 AM UTC

klysm wrote: post #19

henning wrote: post #18

It takes a person like this to design a language like Go, whose fundamental philosophy is that people cannot and do not want to learn anything new, ever. It takes that kind of cynicism to also view hardware with disdain and horror.

I’m glad I’m not the only person who views the design of go through that lens. It seems to me to be firmly rooted in the belief that developers are better off with weaker tools.

That is absolute true about go, but OP is misreading this article: the flagellation is ironic self-flagellation, supposed to be a "hey snap out of it; what's happening to our field?".

What it means is that in some twisted staged of grief, Rob Pike went to acceptance, from "Systems Software Research is Irrelevant, is that what we want?", to "Programming Language Research is Irrelevant, who cares!".