The sad part is that there are too many ideas of old systems lost in a world that 30 years later seems too focused on putting Linux distributions everywhere.
Indeed. I am reminded of what Alan Kay has repeatedly referred to as a “pop culture” of computing that has become widespread in technical communities since the 1980s, when the spread of technology grew faster than educational efforts. One result is there are many inventions and innovations from the research community that never got adopted by major players. The corollary to “perfect is the enemy of the good” is good-enough solutions have amazingly long lifetimes in the marketplace.
There are many great ideas in operating systems, programming languages, and other systems that have been developed in the fast 30 years, but these ideas need to work with existing infrastructure due to costs, network effects, and other important factors.
What is interesting is how some of these features do get picked up by the mainstream computing ecosystem. Rust is one of the biggest breakthroughs in systems programming in decades, bringing together research in linear types and memory safety in a form that has resonated with a lot of systems programmers who tend to resist typical languages from the PL community. Some ideas from Plan 9, such as 9P, have made their way into contemporary systems. Features that were once the domain of Lisp have made their ways into contemporary programming languages, such as anonymous functions.
I think it would be cool if there were some book or blog that taught “alternate universe computing”: the ideas of research systems during the past few decades that didn’t become dominant but have very important lessons that people working on today’s systems can apply. A lot of what I know about research systems comes from graduate school, working in research environments, and reading sites like Hacker News. It would be cool if this information were more widely disseminated.
Yeah the more you read up on computing history from barely even 40 years ago, it seems that most of the things that we take for granted today became so more through politics (and in the case of Microsoft, bullying) than merit.
Regarding Microsoft, this was before even the "Browser Wars" they'd send suited people to the offices of Japanese PC manufacturers and threaten to revoke their Windows licenses if they even OFFERED customers the CHOICE of an alternative operating system!!
This and other dirt is on any YouTube video about the history/demise of alternative computing platforms/OSes.
Plan 9 is novel compared to Unix which almost every OS in common use mimics. But the reference to Plan 9 was more as a nod to its namespace and suitability for distributed computing which partially inspired my design.
In an operating system course I attended it was mostly Unix and everyone was used to bashing Windows NT ("so crappy, bsod etc.") but we had Stallings' book and I was surprised to learn that NT was in many ways an improvement over Unix and Linux.
Is not always that great. Windows 11 is still based on the NT kernel. It's probably still good! Unfortunately the userland experience they put on top of it is just awful.
The sad part is that there are too many ideas of old systems lost in a world that 30 years later seems too focused on putting Linux distributions everywhere.
Indeed. I am reminded of what Alan Kay has repeatedly referred to as a “pop culture” of computing that has become widespread in technical communities since the 1980s, when the spread of technology grew faster than educational efforts. One result is there are many inventions and innovations from the research community that never got adopted by major players. The corollary to “perfect is the enemy of the good” is good-enough solutions have amazingly long lifetimes in the marketplace.
There are many great ideas in operating systems, programming languages, and other systems that have been developed in the fast 30 years, but these ideas need to work with existing infrastructure due to costs, network effects, and other important factors.
What is interesting is how some of these features do get picked up by the mainstream computing ecosystem. Rust is one of the biggest breakthroughs in systems programming in decades, bringing together research in linear types and memory safety in a form that has resonated with a lot of systems programmers who tend to resist typical languages from the PL community. Some ideas from Plan 9, such as 9P, have made their way into contemporary systems. Features that were once the domain of Lisp have made their ways into contemporary programming languages, such as anonymous functions.
I think it would be cool if there were some book or blog that taught “alternate universe computing”: the ideas of research systems during the past few decades that didn’t become dominant but have very important lessons that people working on today’s systems can apply. A lot of what I know about research systems comes from graduate school, working in research environments, and reading sites like Hacker News. It would be cool if this information were more widely disseminated.
There is actually a talk like that from like two years ago, have to see if I find it again.
Yeah the more you read up on computing history from barely even 40 years ago, it seems that most of the things that we take for granted today became so more through politics (and in the case of Microsoft, bullying) than merit.
Regarding Microsoft, this was before even the "Browser Wars" they'd send suited people to the offices of Japanese PC manufacturers and threaten to revoke their Windows licenses if they even OFFERED customers the CHOICE of an alternative operating system!!
This and other dirt is on any YouTube video about the history/demise of alternative computing platforms/OSes.
There was also a period of time where everyone and their mom was writing a new operating system trying to replicate Linux’ success
Isn't what all those UNIX clones keep trying to do?
Some people seem to like throwing around "modern" as a buzzword. I tend to automatically filter that out.
How else would you describe a system that isnt modelled after one that was designed in the 60s like almost all the ones in common use today are?
Your complaint is more pointless than what you're complaining about.
Plan 9 is novel compared to Unix which almost every OS in common use mimics. But the reference to Plan 9 was more as a nod to its namespace and suitability for distributed computing which partially inspired my design.
That's still newer than Linux's system design.
In an operating system course I attended it was mostly Unix and everyone was used to bashing Windows NT ("so crappy, bsod etc.") but we had Stallings' book and I was surprised to learn that NT was in many ways an improvement over Unix and Linux.
NT the kernel is quite good. windows nt itself was not always great.
Is not always that great. Windows 11 is still based on the NT kernel. It's probably still good! Unfortunately the userland experience they put on top of it is just awful.
NT is the brainchild of Dave Cutler, who also had a leading role in developing Dec's VMS.
Yeah, reading tip: "Showstopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft"