Thankfully:
linesOfCode != progress
Putting people on the Moon is beyond fucking awesome.
The Linux kernel trumps the moonshot by a few orders of magnitude
21–30 of 43 posts
Re: The Linux kernel trumps the moonshot by a few orders of magnitude
#22Erm...author isn't taking into account like any of the spinoff tech from the space race, are they?
Linux was a hobby OS that popped up right as legal concerns starting hurting the BSD folks, right? Had that not been the case, it probably would've been as interesting a footnote as Minix or Hurd is today.
Are they just feeling insecure about the kinds of problems their generation is solving?
Re: The Linux kernel trumps the moonshot by a few orders of magnitude
#23By this logic, janitorial work should trump the Linux kernel -- there are far more janitors out there than Linux developers. Janitors are everywhere. We rely on them all the time. The difference between the lunar missions and the Linux kernel is easy to see, if you bother to pay attention. Decades of research in numerous fields were required before the Apollo missions could happen. Experts in numerous fields had to c…
I agree with you. Linux is possibly a bad example, there's nothing special about writing it. That said, we have made major progress in many fields and I disagree that nothing important is done anymore. Consumer aviation comes to mind. The safety standards they have met is truly mind boggling. Wireless and Internet Connectivity is another - wimax has a huge impact in developing countries. IMO, just these two things ha…
I suppose it depends on how you interpret the term "big project." Deploying wireless networking seems comparable to the Interstate Highway System -- you are laying down a new infrastructure to make a particular technology more efficient. It is certainly ambitious and it certainly has a lasting impact, and you definitely need expertise and a commitment to finish it. On the other hand, you do not need the breadth of expertise that Apollo required, which is where I think the line is drawn here.
An example of something comparable to Apollo (one that does not involve outer space) would be a hypothetical switch away from fossil fuels -- completely renewable energy. Imagine a government project to replace every internal combustion engine with electric, to deploy rapid (on the scale of minutes) charging infrastructure, to build wind and solar farms to replace coal/gas power, to find new ways to heat blast furnaces, etc. You would need research in numerous science and engineering fields, and you would need experts in those fields working together. You would need a commitment to doing this, the way we committed to Apollo -- not a wishy-washy federal effort or a lot of poorly-organized local efforts.
Re: The Linux kernel trumps the moonshot by a few orders of magnitude
#24Maybe I am reading this wrong. It seems to be about the US, as opposed to humanity, not having done anything important in a while: "the fact that the US doesn’t have a manned spaceflight program is a step back. But then he said, “our generation hasn’t done anything like land someone on the Moon… we used to do big things.”" Then he goes on to put-up Linux as an example of the US (???) having done something great? Did…
I don't think US vs. humanity was the point of the article. The argument stays the same if you replace it with any other popular (technical) achievement in the country you are talking about ("Wirtschaftswunder" in Germany, Concorde in France, ... I don't know any others. Ignorant me.).
Still, your conclusion is absolutely right and exactly what is expressed in the article with the example of the Linux Kernel.
Re: The Linux kernel trumps the moonshot by a few orders of magnitude
#25Maybe I am reading this wrong. It seems to be about the US, as opposed to humanity, not having done anything important in a while: "the fact that the US doesn’t have a manned spaceflight program is a step back. But then he said, “our generation hasn’t done anything like land someone on the Moon… we used to do big things.”" Then he goes on to put-up Linux as an example of the US (???) having done something great? Did…
The article should have pointed to this rather than Linux IMO:
Re: The Linux kernel trumps the moonshot by a few orders of magnitude
#26Can't cosign this one, I think its a grave underestimation of the import of a species being able to escape however briefly from their home planet. 100 years from now, linux will probably have gone the way of the doodoo bird, certainly by 500 years from now it will have... 500 years from now the question of whether or not man has ever set foot on the moon, and when that first occurred will still have impact
I completely agree. A million years from now, there will likely still be human artifacts on the moon. Where will the linux kernel be in a million years?
Re: The Linux kernel trumps the moonshot by a few orders of magnitude
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
>100 years from now, linux will probably have gone the way of the doodoo bird Based on my car this morning, "doodoo birds" are alive and well. But I do agree with your main point - to quote Carl Sagan, humanity for now is forced to "make its stand on Earth". We have all of our proverbial eggs in one basket and nowhere to go if problems arise. The Linux kernel is a complete unknown to the vast majority of people on th…
The Linux kernel is a complete unknown to the vast majority of people on the planet, yes. But it runs so much of the Internet behind the scenes that I don't think it's fair to say that it only touches the lives of "a small percentage" of the people. Not everyone, to be sure, and depending on how many levels of indirection you consider to be valid, perhaps not even half. But undoubtedly more than can really be called…
>The Linux kernel is a complete unknown to the vast majority of people on the planet, yes. But it runs so much of the Internet behind the scenes that I don't think it's fair to say that it only touches the lives of "a small percentage" of the people
I encourage you to reconsider your position on this. Look for yourself here:
http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm
There are 7 billion people on the planet. Of that 7 billions, 2.4 billion use the Internet. That's 34.3% of people that don't even use the Internet, let alone have their lives touched by the Linux kernel.
Then you add to it that if it were not Linux running a server, it would be another operating system that would've been that particular system administrator's second preference.
The Linux kernel is an amazing thing, but it doesn't compare to the moon landing. As I said, the majority of people in the world would think you were a god if you landed on the moon and returned safely.
2/3 of the people in the world wouldn't even notice if Linux was never invented since they don't even use the Internet. The percentage of people that use the Internet and are impacted even indirectly by Linux is even smaller.
Re: The Linux kernel trumps the moonshot by a few orders of magnitude
#28By this logic, janitorial work should trump the Linux kernel -- there are far more janitors out there than Linux developers. Janitors are everywhere. We rely on them all the time. The difference between the lunar missions and the Linux kernel is easy to see, if you bother to pay attention. Decades of research in numerous fields were required before the Apollo missions could happen. Experts in numerous fields had to c…
Decades of research in numerous fields were required before the Apollo missions could happen.
Actually, it was less than one decade of research post-Kennedy's-announcement, and a lot of groundwork had already been laid by then. The whole thing was standing on the shoulders of giants from day one. It's really difficult to pick any single ground-breaking development in the Apollo project; it was more like a lot of R&D trickle in disparate areas converging on a solution for a single goal, all of which was being built on a solid foundation we had already had by that time.
For example, the Apollo Guidance Computer was, AFAIK, the first serially produced digital computer made of integrated circuits, and I believe that for quite some time, the manufacturers of ACGs in the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory (an offshoot of MIT) were the single largest purchaser of ICs on this planet. The consequence was that the use of ICs in complex computers had been validated, Fairchild Semiconductor (who provided the NOR gates used in the computer) amortized their investments and went on churning them out in ever increasing numbers. You know what followed. But this was more about speeding up the adoption rather then stimulating the development of something completely new.
Experts in numerous fields had to collaborate on the mission.
Since it's a software project, you could also argue that you need experts in various fields of programming. The guy who writes a driver for a new device manufactured by his employer to be included in the mainline kernel probably isn't somenone who you're going to trust with redesigning the kernel memory allocator.
Re: The Linux kernel trumps the moonshot by a few orders of magnitude
#29By this logic, janitorial work should trump the Linux kernel -- there are far more janitors out there than Linux developers. Janitors are everywhere. We rely on them all the time. The difference between the lunar missions and the Linux kernel is easy to see, if you bother to pay attention. Decades of research in numerous fields were required before the Apollo missions could happen. Experts in numerous fields had to c…
I agree with you. Linux is possibly a bad example, there's nothing special about writing it. That said, we have made major progress in many fields and I disagree that nothing important is done anymore. Consumer aviation comes to mind. The safety standards they have met is truly mind boggling. Wireless and Internet Connectivity is another - wimax has a huge impact in developing countries. IMO, just these two things ha…
I agree with you. Linux is possibly a bad example, there's nothing special about writing it.
Are you sure about it? Wasn't it one of the first really large software projects with the distributed development model? (Were there any predecessors to that?)
Re: The Linux kernel trumps the moonshot by a few orders of magnitude
#30Can't cosign this one, I think its a grave underestimation of the import of a species being able to escape however briefly from their home planet. 100 years from now, linux will probably have gone the way of the doodoo bird, certainly by 500 years from now it will have... 500 years from now the question of whether or not man has ever set foot on the moon, and when that first occurred will still have impact
I completely agree. A million years from now, there will likely still be human artifacts on the moon. Where will the linux kernel be in a million years?
Well, hopefully, on the moon, right there in the artifacts.