A Generation Lost in the Bazaar
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A Generation Lost in the Bazaar
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Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar
#2Autoconf 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 impose one solution top-down, e.g. the LSB standardization of RPM, has a far worse track record than letting the bazaar do its thing.
Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar
#3I'm not a coder. And that piece illustrates why Maemo went nowhere with the general public and why Nokia's Internet Tablets failed. I tried to download software only to find out they required "dependencies." Then I had to chase those down. And once I did, I found the software to be buggy and unreliable -- and that's why people go buy iPads. They don't want to jump through so many hoops to get so little. The journey is no reward.
Edited to add: See "The Paradox of Choice" by Barry Schwartz too.
Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar
#4I like your site because the book.
Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar
#5Autoconf 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…
Autoconf is certainly extremely functional but it is not Good.
The irony in all of this of course is that autoconf was created to solve the portability issues between platforms that came from the Cathedral model.
Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar
#6"Later the configure scripts became more ambitious, and as an almost predictable application of the Peter Principle, rather than standardize Unix to eliminate the need for them, somebody wrote a program, autoconf, to write the configure scripts."
I'm not sure I understand how the Peter Principle applies here? Autoconf seems a rational solution in the economic sense: to standardise Unix, you need to have lots of influence to effect buy-in, whereas to write autoconf, you need a big dose of hacking talent. If you have the latter and not the former...
Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar
#7A 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.
Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar
#8I'm not a coder. And that piece illustrates why Maemo went nowhere with the general public and why Nokia's Internet Tablets failed. I tried to download software only to find out they required "dependencies." Then I had to chase those down. And once I did, I found the software to be buggy and unreliable -- and that's why people go buy iPads. They don't want to jump through so many hoops to get so little. The journey i…
Nokia Internet Tablet failed for the masses, because they did not invest in it. Instead they had an internal fight Symbian vs. Linux. Nobody won, instead Apple and Samsung did.
BTW: Did you know that Maemo has an automatic Package Manager that resolves dependencies automatically?
Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar
#9A 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.
Other related, though not entirely equivalent ways of putting it: the Richard Gabriel distinction between the 'MIT' and 'New Jersey' approaches, and the old debate between scientifically optimized central planning versus the chaos (and possibly emergent order) of the marketplace.
Re: A Generation Lost in the Bazaar
#10> Brooks offers well-reasoned hope that there can be a better way.
I'd prefer to see the better way, in terms of a working system, rather than read about it. That doesn't mean something that's better than, say, Linux in whatever niche: that's not too hard. I mean something that can be used and repurposed for things the original authors had no idea about.