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A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

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Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#91

Post by podperson »

phkamp wrote: post #83
davidw wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you talk about a few current "Cathedrals" and how they're different from "Bazaars", that might help the discussion too. The only example that jumps out at me is the original Unix, and I think you'll agree that comparing software from 30 years ago that does vastly less than ... pretty much anything out there these days is not an entirely fair, nor useful comparison.

The fact that you and others cannot even spot any more recent cathedrals is sort of my entire point here...

I held IT jobs before 1990. Might I make the observation that when a software project is no longer able to be maintained by a single person or dynamic duo, it will tend to become a bazaar, no matter how cathedral-like it may have been before, and that the alternative is stagnation.

I will cite as evidence two of my favorite programs ever:

WriteNow (for Macintosh) an excellent early word-processor written entirely in assembler. Unequaled for many years for its combination of stability, raw performance, and ease of use, ultimately it simply could not add new features (let alone make the jump to PowerPC) and died on the vine.

HyperCard, which was perhaps one of the most dazzling, innovative, and influential products ever to ship, which pretty much stopped evolving once its original programmer lost interest.

Today we have the phenomenon of the incredible version one product, usually developed by one person, which never really makes it to 2.0. These seem very much like cathedrals.

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#92

Post by rbanffy »

phkamp wrote: post #35
billswift wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your essay was unbalanced, yes open source sucks in the way you complained about, but Microsoft sucks even worse in some ways (if not quite as badly in others). Complaining about something in isolation is easy; everything sucks compared to perfection. But how is it compared to the real alternatives.

Who said anything about Microsoft ?

I think it's a cultural reflex. Microsoft has been paying so many people to criticize open source for so long that the first reaction when people see what they interpret as baseless criticism is to look for Ballmer's sweaty palm prints.

I understand where you stand and agree some of your criticism is valid, but "quality" doesn't have the same meaning for everyone.

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#93

Post by jballanc »

phkamp wrote: post #58

OK, I'll make a couple of general observations here. First: It would be a big help for this discussion, if we could have the informal convention that people who were employed in an IT job before 1990 marked their post. I think it would show a quite clear divergence of attitude. Second: It's very obivious, that a lot of you have never been anywhere near the kind of software project posited in the "cathedral" meme, ins…

First: Have you ever looked at a plot of people for/against mariage rights for gays vs age? I suspect that the clear divergence does exist, but may not mean what you think it means...

Second: I worked on OS X. In fact, I worked on Snow Leopard, and the start of Lion. What's interesting about that, is that Snow Leopard was the last version of OS X developed according to the "Cathedral" model. Also, while the Snow Leopard cathedral was being built, iOS was being developed firmly using the bazaar model...

Third: You know, I wonder if you've ever been to a bazaar before? I live in Turkey, where the bazaar is a way of life (and where one of the largest, oldest bazaars in the world is located). I've never found "spare parts" at a bazaar. What I have found is some of the highest quality jewelry, tapestries, rugs, and other hand-made goods you'll find anywhere.

Fourth: I think you're conflating "good quality"=>Cathedral and "poor quality"=>Bazaar. The only thing that distinguishes the Cathedral and the Bazaar is whether or not there is one single individual in whose head the only valid vision of the completed project exists. You might do well to read up a bit on the history of Kapalıcarşı. Throughout its history there were guilds to enforce authenticity and all manner of quality control mechanisms. It is possible to have a Bazaar and a very high quality product.

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#94

Post by lmm »

tedunangst wrote: post #40
lmm wrote: post #2

Autoconf is an easy target for these kind of rants, but you know what? It does its job, and it does it very well. The ratio of autoconf to non-autoconf programs on my system is probably 10:1, but the ratio of build problems is something like 1:20. If anyone ever managed to write a genuinely better build system, the bazaar would let it rise to the top; the gradual rise of e.g. cmake is testament to this. Trying to imp…

When OpenBSD replaced GNU libtool with a home grown perl version, it was so much faster I believe it literally cut days off machine time off a full ports build. For smaller packages, with tiny C files, running libtool.sh takes longer than running the compiler does. The majority of build time for some of those packages is still running configure, testing for things like , which the package provides no workaround when…

>When OpenBSD replaced GNU libtool with a home grown perl version, it was so much faster I believe it literally cut days off machine time off a full ports build. For smaller packages, with tiny C files, running libtool.sh takes longer than running the compiler does. The majority of build time for some of those packages is still running configure, testing for things like , which the package provides no workaround when missing. The OpenBSD project alone has spent years of machine time to running configure and libtool.

Sounds like the bazaar in action. I hope they succeed, but I know two gentoo projects that tried to do the same thing and were eventually abandoned as unworkable.

>As for doing its job well, the failure mode of configure "you can't build this" is abysmal. Just give me a fucking Makefile, I'll fix it myself. I love packages that come with Makefiles that don't work. I pop "-I/usr/local/include" into CFLAGS, run make again, and boom. Done. Trying to do the same with configure? Forget about it. --with-include-dir or whatever doesn't work, because it's really running some bogus test in the background which expects /bin/bash to exist and so on and so forth.

Sounds like you know make better than you know autoconf; I find it easier to fix autoconf problems on the rare occasions when they fail.

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#95

Post by hollerith »

pasbesoin wrote: post #75

Thirteen years ago, Eric Raymond's book The Cathedral and the Bazaar (O'Reilly Media, 2001) Off by two? Seriously, though, how do you get 13 out of that (unless calculating from when the author conceivably began working on the book per se)? I'm starting to read the article; I found mildly disconcerting that the first sentence appears to make a mis-statement, but I don't expect that to foreshadow the meat of the messa…

CatB was an essay on a web page for years before the book of that name.

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#96

Post by DanBC »

calinet6 wrote: post #52

Architects don't build cathedrals anymore, either. Neither do most software architects. Yet, look what they have built: an incredibly diverse collection of structures of all shapes and sizes, all working together to form an imperfect yet efficient system. Surely its success is due in part to its flexibility and imperfection, and the fact that they are no longer over-engineered and inflexible behemoths made from stone…

> an incredibly diverse collection of structures of all shapes and sizes, all working together to form an imperfect yet efficient system.

Efficient?

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#97

Post by davidw »

phkamp wrote: post #83
davidw wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't you talk about a few current "Cathedrals" and how they're different from "Bazaars", that might help the discussion too. The only example that jumps out at me is the original Unix, and I think you'll agree that comparing software from 30 years ago that does vastly less than ... pretty much anything out there these days is not an entirely fair, nor useful comparison.

The fact that you and others cannot even spot any more recent cathedrals is sort of my entire point here...

I most certainly can think of some things that would qualify in my mind, but since we're talking about rather vague notions, why don't you go ahead and name some projects you think are good examples? You seem like a bright guy; I'm trying to understand your point of view better, and so far, you are failing to communicate it very well.

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#98

Post by thebooktocome »

jballanc wrote: post #93
phkamp wrote: post #58

OK, I'll make a couple of general observations here. First: It would be a big help for this discussion, if we could have the informal convention that people who were employed in an IT job before 1990 marked their post. I think it would show a quite clear divergence of attitude. Second: It's very obivious, that a lot of you have never been anywhere near the kind of software project posited in the "cathedral" meme, ins…

First: Have you ever looked at a plot of people for/against mariage rights for gays vs age? I suspect that the clear divergence does exist, but may not mean what you think it means... Second: I worked on OS X. In fact, I worked on Snow Leopard, and the start of Lion. What's interesting about that, is that Snow Leopard was the last version of OS X developed according to the "Cathedral" model. Also, while the Snow Leop…

According to phkamp, iOS is a cathedral kind of project.

I was hoping someone would bring up OS X and how horrible its cathedral-born API became around 10.5, but I was born in '85 and therefore have no right to speak in this thread.

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#99

Post by Morcane »

anvandare wrote: post #7

A restatement of the old dichotomy: the rebel alliance of young, creative, anarchist hackers who are more interested in fun versus the empire of old, methodical, hierarchical business-programmers who bean-count every line of documentation and analysis.

You mean the business-programmers that are called in to maintain (and refactor)the creative, anarchist mess creative, anarchist hackers created?

Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar

#100

Post by wtvanhest »

phkamp wrote: post #70
wtvanhest wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, the nicest thing about HN for me is that I get to see my words evaluated on their own merit rather than what people know about me. HN has made me a better thinker and better communicator. Over the past year or so that I have contributed, I have clearly seen the way my thoughts diverge from the reality of what others believe. Sometimes I disagree and stop convincing people, other times I present arguments wh…

And that is probably a good way to filter through the million monkeys. But some topics would require entire books to present in a context free way, this is one of them, and I don't have the time and money to write that book, so you will have to make do with a column @ACM. When I read something, and have the nagging feeling that there is context I'm missing, I go looking for that context, usually starting with "who th…

I enjoyed your post, but I also understand why people hated it. They hated it because you presented an idea that is completely at odds with the way many HN readers think. Then, rather than sitting back and watching the discussion you became offended and went on an aggressive warpath.

You didn’t even consider that what I wrote was meant as a complement to the fact that you are taking a view that no one else currently takes. An idea that has real merit and is worth discussion. You took my comment as an insult and wrote:

“But whatever blows your hair back buddy...”

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