Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (2000) [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (2000) [pdf]

#71

Post by MichaelMoser123 » Wed, Dec 29, 2021, 2:07 PM UTC

pjmlp wrote: post #70

MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right, of course. However thin clients weren't such a big hit, and a workstation did cost half a fortune. All this was a bit remote, to me, at least.

Naturally they were only a reality in university campus and big companies, my first thin clients were X Windows IBM terminals and green phosphor text ones used to connect into DG/UX used on campus.

I once worked at a shop that developed slightly more modern GUI clients for their mainframe systems, we got TN3270 emulators. fun!

Re: Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (2000) [pdf]

#72

Post by protomyth » Wed, Dec 29, 2021, 10:31 PM UTC

This paper came to my mind when I watched this clip which is extended material from the documentary Side by Side https://youtu.be/lepOQ2KfDwo

I just think writing off all the ideas that will follow, sometimes in different venues, is just sour grapes.

Re: Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (2000) [pdf]

#73

Post by kevinfat » Thu, Dec 30, 2021, 3:32 AM UTC

ekidd wrote: post #42

Since Rob Pike wrote this note in 2000, there have been many commercially important advances in systems software: - iOS and Android: Power-efficient mobile systems, wakelocks, etc. - Docker, Borg and Kubernetes: Container isolation, cluster orchestrators. - Modern browser environments, with high degrees of isolation. - Fast JavaScript runtimes and specialized JITs. - WASM. - Ruby and metaprogramming, which rose to co…

To be a contrarian here to bring up a question, do these things really count? The roots of similar ideas already existed decades ago in old journals for all of these. Maybe the phrase "System Software Research is Irrelevant" could be interpreted as saying that all the big foundational ideas have all been found. The low hanging research is done and now its all iterating on details. Please tell me why this is incorrect?