First Rule of Google Fuchsia OS Is to Not to Talk About It • Hacker News Board

Re: First Rule of Google Fuchsia OS Is to Not to Talk About It

#51

Post by tyingq » Sat, May 20, 2017, 1:00 AM UTC

bitmapbrother wrote: post #49

tyingq wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His comments sound more like he contributed to one of the BSD kernels.

He doesn't really indicate what kernel he worked on. Regardless, Linus knows no kernel boundaries ;) I'm also surprised that someone, who purports to be knowledgeable on kernel development, was not cognizant of the fact that the code he was looking at was only started 8 months ago and no where near production quality. To start making assumptions on the quality of an OS based on very early code was extremely immature…

He does, later in the thread...

"I just learned by doing. Got annoyed by something being bad in one of the BSDs, found out how to get into their secret chat channel, started whining and got told to shut up and write the code. So I did."

And rambles more about why he feels Fuchsia did the wrong thing. Specifically because better implementations of some parts with licenses compatible with Fuchsia existed. Which I suspect is a nod again to BSD.

With a more calm tone I think saying that writing your own suboptimal tick timers, or locking strategy, or whatever...versus using something known good, is fair criticism. Not being my space, I wasn't sure if the base criticism was valid. The responses here seem to indicate they are.

Re: First Rule of Google Fuchsia OS Is to Not to Talk About It

#52

Post by gsnedders » Sat, May 20, 2017, 2:02 AM UTC

johansch wrote: post #43

posixplz wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well if the company is publicly traded, secrecy of internal matters is a legal requirement and contingency of employment.

By default, certainly. Btw: In February I spent some time looking at the then about 100 committers to Fuchsia/Flutter. Some quite impressive names. I think Fuchsia is a really serious effort in the Chrome team.

> I think Fuchsia is a really serious effort in the Chrome team.

There's definitely a lot of ex-Chrome people there, but I don't think it follows that it is in any way in the Chrome team. I'm still curious as to why all of them are essentially creating a new OS, though! Quite the departure from what they've worked on before (and many have been working on the web for two decades).

Re: First Rule of Google Fuchsia OS Is to Not to Talk About It

#53

Post by bitmapbrother » Sat, May 20, 2017, 3:26 AM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #51

bitmapbrother wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He doesn't really indicate what kernel he worked on. Regardless, Linus knows no kernel boundaries ;) I'm also surprised that someone, who purports to be knowledgeable on kernel development, was not cognizant of the fact that the code he was looking at was only started 8 months ago and no where near production quality. To start making assumptions on the quality of an OS based on very early code was extremely immature…

He does, later in the thread... "I just learned by doing. Got annoyed by something being bad in one of the BSDs, found out how to get into their secret chat channel, started whining and got told to shut up and write the code. So I did." And rambles more about why he feels Fuchsia did the wrong thing. Specifically because better implementations of some parts with licenses compatible with Fuchsia existed. Which I suspe…

The problem with his criticism is that he seems to think the present decisions the authors have made, for an 8 month old OS, are written in stone. It's like reviewing a car while it's still being assembled at the factory.

Fuchsia is probably 2 or more years away from an Alpha release. Things are changing at a rapid pace.

Re: First Rule of Google Fuchsia OS Is to Not to Talk About It

#54

Post by tyingq » Sat, May 20, 2017, 3:49 AM UTC

bitmapbrother wrote: post #53

tyingq wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He does, later in the thread... "I just learned by doing. Got annoyed by something being bad in one of the BSDs, found out how to get into their secret chat channel, started whining and got told to shut up and write the code. So I did." And rambles more about why he feels Fuchsia did the wrong thing. Specifically because better implementations of some parts with licenses compatible with Fuchsia existed. Which I suspe…

The problem with his criticism is that he seems to think the present decisions the authors have made, for an 8 month old OS, are written in stone. It's like reviewing a car while it's still being assembled at the factory. Fuchsia is probably 2 or more years away from an Alpha release. Things are changing at a rapid pace.

No, I got that idea. But, for his examples, he mentions existing solutions could have been lifted.

If the suboptimal stuff was existing, I take your point. Perhaps it was straight from LK?

But writing something new, that has flaws, as a placeholder...when something better exists already, and has a compatible license...that seems fair game to question.

Especially if it's something that has tentacles and creates dependencies. Placeholders sometimes don't stay as such.

Re: First Rule of Google Fuchsia OS Is to Not to Talk About It

#55

Post by erikpukinskis » Sat, May 20, 2017, 4:09 AM UTC

tyingq wrote: post #3

Saw this rant about Fuchsia on reddit that appears on the surface to make some good points: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/6a026o/googles... Not my area of expertise for sure though. Any kernel dev types here had a chance to look at Fuchsia? Is the criticism warranted? Update: Fixed link to point at the right comment. Edit: Should have mentioned the tone is a bit over the top. More interested in the ac…

When you are trying to invent a new version of anything low level, sometimes it makes sense for you to just stub out a supporting library out with a naive implementation, because you then have an interface that you can move around easily. If you are wrapping an existing implementation, with lots of optimizations and corner cases, you'll just get bogged down in refactoring all of those expectations over and over.

Today I implemented an immutable-ish array in JavaScript. I'm using it because I needed something that could work in conjunction with the non-relational, non-key-value database I am building. There were other libraries that provided immutable arrays, probably much better than my implementation. But because I wrote both the immutable data structure and the database, and both implementations are naive, I can very easily trade functionality back and forth between them in order to get the interface right where it needs to be.

There's a good chance I'll then swap out my data store for some existing algorithm, but I really won't know which algorithm I even need until after I've built several applications on top of the naive implementation.

Really, the key here is that this is prototyping. When you're building a prototype, you don't do the thing that will lead to the most correct code, you do the thing that will teach you the most about what the design should be.

Re: First Rule of Google Fuchsia OS Is to Not to Talk About It

#56

Post by on_and_off » Sat, May 20, 2017, 9:17 AM UTC

potatolicious wrote: post #18

CountSessine wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We all have bad days, but some of this rant is really toxic. Dear god. I looked at the kernel and it's awful Stuff real operating systems have solved decades ago WTF? This is hilarious. Did they decide to reinvent all the wheels badly just because someone at Google was bored? The ex kernel developer in me feels insulted that a serious company would release something this immature So, have they actually released Fusch…

A quote that, while not automatically true, seems to apply to many situations: "People who are brutally honest generally enjoy the brutality more than the honesty." - Richard Needham

A bit off topic, but thanks for this quote !

It resonates a lot with my experience.

Re: First Rule of Google Fuchsia OS Is to Not to Talk About It

#57

Post by on_and_off » Sat, May 20, 2017, 11:44 AM UTC

theDoug wrote: post #14

Ajedi32 wrote: post #2

Not really any new information here. It's fun to speculate about what Fuchsia might become, but it's pretty clear Google's not ready to announce anything yet. The only reason we even know it exists is because they made the source code public.

Exactly this. And So fun to speculate on something far from its likely end goal or release state, because _only_ of who made it public. A lot of cooks in the opinion kitchen looking out the window at wheat growing, pretending it’s already a baked cake, and of which they already dislike the taste. (Disclosure: I work at Google, not on this.)

Since I work on Android, I try to follow Fuchsia closely since it might impact me greatly one day.

The funniest part is that I have seen reviews of Fuchsia on Youtube.

I am not at Google either but there are 99% chances that the UI that is committed right now is just a tech test designed by devs.

Re: First Rule of Google Fuchsia OS Is to Not to Talk About It

#58

Post by kuschku » Thu, May 25, 2017, 3:40 PM UTC

mckillop wrote: post #46

swetland wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd suggest that it's possible we're using simple, but functional placeholder implementations of things so the entire system can boot and run, and then various parts of it can be worked on at various paces, in parallel, etc. Lot of moving parts in a kernel, or OS, and one could try to write all of them in their final form first and hope they all work together when done, or one could take a more incremental approach.…

I also encourage anyone that sees something that could be done better to sign up and submit some code!

That would be a lot easier if it were GPL with no CLA.

The way it currently is, it looks like something Google will develop with the help of the FLOSS community, and then take the code, close it, and continue everything else in the dark.

As they’ve done with most parts of Android by now.