The Linux kernel trumps the moonshot by a few orders of magnitude • Hacker News Board

Re: The Linux kernel trumps the moonshot by a few orders of magnitude

#41

Post by gngeal » Sat, Jun 01, 2013, 2:49 PM UTC

tshepang wrote: post #38

gngeal wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?)

By the time Linux was born, the GNU project had produced a large collection of tools, enough to have its founder claim that the last major missing piece for it to be a complete OS was a kernel.

Well, yes, but the individual GNU tools are to a large degree independent. I'm not an insider, but to me it seemed that the kernel development effort really pushed the limits in the area of distributed development of a single large code base. (I'm not sure, though, how exactly did the kernel code base measure with the contemporary GCC code base, which is probably the closest in complexity from all the GNU stuff.)

Re: The Linux kernel trumps the moonshot by a few orders of magnitude

#42

Post by tshepang » Wed, Jun 05, 2013, 8:08 PM UTC

gngeal wrote: post #41

tshepang wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the time Linux was born, the GNU project had produced a large collection of tools, enough to have its founder claim that the last major missing piece for it to be a complete OS was a kernel.

Well, yes, but the individual GNU tools are to a large degree independent. I'm not an insider, but to me it seemed that the kernel development effort really pushed the limits in the area of distributed development of a single large code base. (I'm not sure, though, how exactly did the kernel code base measure with the contemporary GCC code base, which is probably the closest in complexity from all the GNU stuff.)

Yes, GCC is most likely the single largest of all GNU tools (~6 million SLOC).

Re: The Linux kernel trumps the moonshot by a few orders of magnitude

#43

Post by cleverjake » Thu, Jun 06, 2013, 3:04 AM UTC

masklinn wrote: post #12

cleverjake wrote: post #4

I think the issue is that to the average person, there is nothing inspiring about the linux kernel. The space race created a large amount of respect for science/research in the public eye - something that results in more kids enrolled in science and math programs. The long tail effect of sending people to the moon is a lot hard to measure than KLOC.

> I think the issue is that to the average person, there is nothing inspiring about the linux kernel. There's nothing inspiring to a non-average person either, it's not like the linux kernel is a work of discovery and greatness. It's nice, it's a free unix, it's everywhere and it's convenient, but it's not really blazing new trails or anything. And if the linux kernel didn't exist, people would be using something els…

Im confused as to what your point is - could you clarify?