Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

John Carmack's arguments against building a custom XR OS at Meta

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 675 posts

Re: John Carmack's arguments against building a custom XR OS at Meta

#191

Post by techpineapple »

thepryz wrote: post #174
howdyhowdy123 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hehehe. I have talked to John Carmack a few times. He's super harsh and has zero filter or social niceties (Azperger's level, not that he is, but just sayin'). If you are not used to it or understand where it's coming from, it can be quite a shock. Or at least he was, many years ago. Maybe he's changed.

I can see that. Sadly, there are a lot of people in the world who simply don't know how to deal with people who can be direct, if not somewhat abrasive, in their communication style. Their intent can be noble, well-intentioned, and not meant to offend. They simply don't beat around the bush or worry about whether your fragile ego will be bruised when they make an observation. I've had to coach people and help them un…

For another take - what’s the game theory here?

If I’m kinda sensitive but also hyper-ambitious, I acknowledge that Facebook has

1. Some of the highest pay in the industry. 2. Ultra-competitive environment. 3. Low moral principles.

Seems like the strategy would be to use every lever at your disposal to manipulate your environment, rather than leave and risk getting paid less.

Re: John Carmack's arguments against building a custom XR OS at Meta

#192

Post by fooker »

ronsor wrote: post #107
gorset wrote: post #87

Mechanisms for getting the linux kernel out of the way is pretty decent these days, and CPUs with a lot of cores are common. That means you can isolate a bunch of cores and pin threads the way you want, and then use some kernel-bypass to access hardware directly. Communicate between cores using ring buffers. This gives you best of both worlds - carefully designed system for the hardware with near optimal performance,…

> use some kernel-bypass to access hardware directly You can always mmap /dev/mem to get at physical memory.

No, that's not really what kernel bypass means.

Re: John Carmack's arguments against building a custom XR OS at Meta

#193

Post by WD-42 »

dagmx wrote: post #187
Aurornis wrote: post #133

> They also got me reported to HR by the manager of the XROS effort for supposedly making his team members feel bad I've only seen John Carmack's public interactions, but they've all been professional and kind. It's depressing to imagine HR getting involved because someone's feelings had been hurt by an objective discussion from a person like John Carmack. I'm having flashbacks to the times in my career when coworker…

John can be quite blunt and harsh in person, from everyone I know who’s interacted with him. If he doesn’t believe in something, he can sometimes be over critical and it’s hard to push back in that kind of power imbalance.

Which makes sense when you are one of 3 developers at ID software. There's absolutely no room for waste.

This is Meta. Let the kids build their operating system ffs. Is he now more concerned with protecting shareholder value? Who cares.

Re: John Carmack's arguments against building a custom XR OS at Meta

#194

Post by lll-o-lll »

zoeysmithe wrote: post #165
Aurornis wrote: post #133

> They also got me reported to HR by the manager of the XROS effort for supposedly making his team members feel bad I've only seen John Carmack's public interactions, but they've all been professional and kind. It's depressing to imagine HR getting involved because someone's feelings had been hurt by an objective discussion from a person like John Carmack. I'm having flashbacks to the times in my career when coworker…

Sorry but if you know his story, seen candid videos of him, or talked to the people around him, he's a Linus-level "I'll say what I want" type. There weird hagiographies need to go. Carmack is absolutely not known to be kind. I have no idea what happened here but the idea that's he's this kindly old grandpa who could never, ever be rude or unprofessional is really out there.

And stupid. Like it or hate it, a non-nonsense, direct speaking, but fair and objective boss is the one you want. No one is served by failure; not the people at the top, nor the people at the bottom.

There is a difference between “this project is not going to work” vs “these people are incompetent and the project should be cancelled as a result”. The former needs to be said, the latter is a HR violation.

Re: John Carmack's arguments against building a custom XR OS at Meta

#195

Post by markus_zhang »

WD-42 wrote: post #189
markus_zhang wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have mixed feelings about this. In one part, JC is someone I look up to, at least from the perspective of engineering. On the other hand, putting myself in the shoes in someone who got the once in life chance to build a new OS with corp support for a new shiny device…I for hell would want to do this.

Exactly! It seems very narc-y. Just let me build my cool waste of company resources, it's not like Zucky is going to notice, he's too busy building his 11 homes. Imagine being able to build an operating system, basically the end-game of being a programmer, and get PAID for it. Then some nerd tells on you.

I'm not sure if you are trying to be /s, but yeah that's basically what I'm trying to say. Definitely better than working on those recommendation systems.

Damn, I'd pay to work in some serious OS/Compiler teams, but hey why should they hire me? Oh well...Yeah I'm doing a bit of projects on my side but man I'm so burnt out by my 9am-5pm $$ job + 5pm-10pm kid job that I barely have any large chunk of time to work on those.

Re: John Carmack's arguments against building a custom XR OS at Meta

#196

Post by wilg »

Aurornis wrote: post #133

> They also got me reported to HR by the manager of the XROS effort for supposedly making his team members feel bad I've only seen John Carmack's public interactions, but they've all been professional and kind. It's depressing to imagine HR getting involved because someone's feelings had been hurt by an objective discussion from a person like John Carmack. I'm having flashbacks to the times in my career when coworker…

It is very much not an objective discussion if you are discussing whether it makes sense to develop a new operating system.

Re: John Carmack's arguments against building a custom XR OS at Meta

#197

Post by vinyl7 »

lukev wrote: post #41

This is completely right from a product point of view, which is Carmack's argument. But I have wondered why one of these companies with billions of dollars to burn hasn't tried to create something new as a strategic initiative. Yes, there wouldn't be any ROI for years, and yes, the first several products on the platform would probably be better off on something more traditional. But the long term value could potentia…

Western companies haven't thought about long term value in decades

Re: John Carmack's arguments against building a custom XR OS at Meta

#199

Post by makeitdouble »

b112 wrote: post #114
jnwatson wrote: post #23

I've written a lot of low level software, BSPs, and most of an OS, and the main reason to not write your own OS these days is silicon vendors. Back in the day, they would provide you a spec detailed enough that you could feasibly write your own drivers. These days, you get a medium-level description and a Linux driver of questionable quality. Part of this is just laziness, but mostly this is a function of complexity.…

Modern hardware is just so complicated it would take a long time to completely document, and even longer to write a driver for. That's what's claimed. That's what people say, yet it's just an excuse. I've heard the same sort of excuse people have, after they write a massive codebase, then say "Oops, sorry, didn't get around to documenting it". And no, hardware is not more difficult than software to document. If the s…

> "Oops, sorry, didn't get around to documenting it".

That's obviously the wrong message. They should say "Go ask the engineering VP to get us off any other projects for another cycle while we're writing 'satisfying' documentation".

Extensive documentation comes at a price few companies are willing to pay (and that's not just a matter of resources. Look at Apple's documentation)

Re: John Carmack's arguments against building a custom XR OS at Meta

#200

Post by dist1ll »

jnwatson wrote: post #23

I've written a lot of low level software, BSPs, and most of an OS, and the main reason to not write your own OS these days is silicon vendors. Back in the day, they would provide you a spec detailed enough that you could feasibly write your own drivers. These days, you get a medium-level description and a Linux driver of questionable quality. Part of this is just laziness, but mostly this is a function of complexity.…

Intel still does it. As far as I can see they're the only player in town that provide open, detailed documentation for their high-speed NICs [0]. You can actually write a driver for their 100Gb cards from scratch using their datasheet. Most other vendors would either (1) ignore you, (2) make you sign an NDA or (3) refer you to their poorly documented Linux/BSD driver.

Not sure what the situation is for other hardware like NVMe SSDs.

[0] 2750 page datasheet for the e810 Ethernet controller https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/content-details/6138...

Post reply on HN