Google’s not-so-secret new OS

Typescript and dart are completely different animals. I can leave typescript for good by compiling to js once and it's designed to output human readable code. The js it produces will be immediately usable as javascript, and I'm totally free from the semi open language that MS controls.

Dart is a different language, it has no fallback to something familiar. I don't doubt that it's many years ahead of TS in every way but it's still rather proprietary compared to TS that I can shut off at any time with minimal effort.

The openness of typescript and dart are comparable. Both being run primarily by their champion companies with code free to review and fork but with limited ability to commit changes. They both require you to sign over copyright of code committed which I don't like for my own reasons but the license is open source.

The big difference to me is that typescript offers an escape hatch and dart does not, because one is pretty much a JavaScript enhancement and the other is completely different. I hate vendor lock-in and loss of the open web in general and you will see this as a common theme to most of my more flamey(controversial) comments. The web is closing off in so many directions and as an open source developer in my free time this is of great personal concern. I don't like that hackernews and reddit can be an echo chamber and posting contrary opinions usually makes the discussion more balanced even if a lot of people don't like it.

I'm not ex google, MS, or any of the tech giants. I'm not smart or dedicated enough to work anywhere you've heard of :). Most of my comments on throwaway accounts are unpopular, that's why I don't use my normal account. I'm not some invisible super shill, hackernews knows all the accounts I use and I'm fine with that.

I've just got my own opinions and when they're controversial it's not in my best interest to comment using my normal account. It wouldn't be for anyone. It would be utterly stupid to hurt my open source projects or reputation as a developer just because somebody doesn't like my opinions. My code and my work have no opinions, and I like to keep it that way. Throwaways are my way of keeping my opinions to myself, and I don't see anything wrong with that. Separation of church and state if you will.

I'm not totally against Google or any company in general. Microsoft in particular has an extremely rocky history when it comes to open source projects. They've probably done more harm to Linux than any company in existence. If typescript and dart both had equal migration paths I would choose dart in a heartbeat. I love tsickle and the closure compiler and the fact that the angular team is using typescript. Still, I feel like my criticism of dart has some truth to it at least.

I've taken aim at Google for the past week for what they've done to the openness of Android, AMP, and dart. Am I wrong? It's hard to argue that any of Google's platforms are as open as they were a few years ago. Some of my really unpopular opinions were posted in reponse to other poster calling me FUD or a shill, and can you blame me? It's one thing to say "I disagree and this is why" but pretty rude to just say "I don't believe you because you're obviously lying or getting paid to say that". To that I say well screw you I'll post what I want without being polite at all if you're going to be so rude. I'm replying nicely to you because you genuinely asked why I used a throwaway and said that you worked with dart at Google, way more than most would admit.

Having an unpopular opinion just gets you labelled as a shill or FUD and that's a lot of the reason I use throwaways. I've actually gotten death threats before for disagreeing with people on the internet. It's hard to say I would be better off getting death threats from people that can easily find my name, occupation, and address. Look at more of my post history and you'll see that I'm probably not a shill, or a really sneaky one if you don't want to believe that.

I just bashed Intel for removing ECC support from their desktop lines a few days ago, and Facebook and Microsoft a day before that for their shittastic timeline algorithm and irrational fear of Linux taking over corporate clients respectively. A day before that I trashed PayPal for some of their recent cronyism and praised the quality of Google's Guava libraries.

In my more ancient post history I mention how much C#'s ecosystem sucks compared to java and how even open sourcing the language doesn't mean much when it only targets windows using visual studio. I bitched about the baby boomers screwing the mellenials and asked how it's possible to start a side business. I said I don't like Python because it's slow and gave people online marketing tips on how I write high ranking blog articles. I mentioned that .NET core sounds great but it's alpha quality and it sucks that I have to use the new version of Windows server to have http2 support. I talked about how WordPress is absolute shit for anything even medium traffic. Mentioned a quip about using monotonic grey codes. Brought up some arguments about montsanto and GM windblown crops. Mentioned that Uber doesn't give a fuck about their drivers and some examples of this despite their press releases saying otherwise.

I'm getting a lot of comments about how I'm some full of shit corporate mouthpiece again so I guess it's time to cycle the old throwaway again.

I'm not asking you to agree but keep in mind that some people will have opinions completely contrary to your own. Sometimes their reasoning will be logical even though you come to a different conclusion, people are just different

It's why I got out of the MS ecosystem. I bought quite heavily into WPF for the Vista launch, and it was obvious that was a dead end within a couple of years. Not only that, but I could see exactly the same thing happening to all the other neat stuff I was planning to look into at the same time. That was not the way to encourage my long-term membership of the Visual Studio clan.

Both of you are half-right. It's not an underlying technical Linux issue, but it does come from Linux's "everyone can have one" ecosystem model. While on Windows and macOS there is only one master, so only one master can be responsible for the updates.

So either Google fully controls Andromeda, as it does with Chrome OS, so it can update it (Google could probably still release an open source "Andromedium" version later on, like it does with Chromium OS), or it somehow forces all OEMs to update on time right from the beginning.

But the later sounds like a real pain from Google's perspective, as it would probably have to one day completely retract Samsung's license for instance, or sue it, if Samsung doesn't comply, and this could create all sorts of PR problems for the Google. Or Google would have to compromise and allow the OEMs to delay updates from say 1 month to 3 months or more. And then we'd be right back to square one.

I don't think there's a real practical solution to the update problem other than Google fully controlling the codebase.

> The joke of course being that linux is monolithic and googles new OS is a microkernel ergo more modular.

If you're suggesting that because the microkernel is modular that means "it should solve the update problem", I disagree. I don't think it would be much better than what we have now. Sure, it may be easier for Google, or say Samsung, to update their modules faster. But what about the other modules in the market? Will they be updated just as fast by noname OEMs? Probably not.

There is one BIG difference. The Android frameworks are already the default on a major platform. Googles Material Design already looks native on both Android (majority phone platform) and ChromeOS. Java did not have a major platform where it was the default framework. It was not the default on Windows or Mac, not even on Unices (with the exception maybe of SunOS or Solaris, but not even there). If Java framework was not the default anywhere, then the primary reason to use Java was because it works everywhere. The primary reason to use the Android frameworks and Material Design is to publish on Android. Having it work everywhere else is a great bonus.

Android and Material Design will not be "write once, mediocre everywhere". It may become "write once, great on Android (majority of phones) and ChromeOS, mediocre elsewhere." But writing for Android does not exclude creating native versions for other platforms. Using Java did exclude creating native versions because that was the reason to use Java, to not have to write native versions.

Replace 2 years with 7 years and the logic doesn't change.