Re: [TUHS] ATC/OSDI'21 joint keynote: It's Time for Operating Systems to Rediscover Hardware (Timothy Roscoe)

[Jon Steinhart <jon@fourwinds.com>]

David Arnold writes:
> And it’s not just those applications: to have your new OS be useful,
> you need to support a dozen languages, a hundred protocols, thousands of
> libraries … a vast range of stuff that would take years, perhaps decades,
> to port over or reinvent in your new paradigm.
> 
> The idea that you’d turn your back on the accumulated value of 50 years
> of countless people’s work because your set of system calls is slightly
> better than the one you’ve got now … that’s a very, very big call.
> 
> So I think the notion that “the kids” are less willing to understand,
> or to drill deep, is doing them a disservice.  They do understand, and
> they (mostly) make the choice to leverage that body of work rather than
> embark on the futility of starting afresh.

I have to respectfully disagree which is a challenge because being
disagreeable comes more naturally than being respectful :-)

We already have this.  I kind of wonder what actual value could have been
created with the resources that went into supporting the dozen languages,
hundred protocols, and so on.  Is there value to me that a library exists
that lets me to something in python that is identical to the library that
lets me do that same thing in perl or the one that lets me do it in php or
the one that lets me do it in ...?  No.

You made a big assumption that I was suggesting tossing prior work and API
specs which I wasn't.  Would you have wanted to have the 32 bit system call
API frozen because it worked and not wanted 64 bit versions?  History shows
plenty of good work going into compatibility when the underlying technology
evolves.

Don't know how much time you spend with "the kids" these days.  I make it a
point to do so when I can; SIGCOVID has cut into that unfortunately.  One
can get a CS degree without ever taking an OS course at many respectable
institutions.  Many are not so much making a choice as doing what they can
which is inadequate in my opinion.

Was discussing this with someone the other day.  I'm glad that I have an
engineering degree instead of a computer science degree.  And I'm also glad
that I prevailed with one of my mentees to double major in EE and CS when
he wanted to bail on the EE.  While it's a generalization, as an engineeer I
was educated on how the universe worked - chemistry, physics, and so on.  It
was up to me to figure out how to apply that knowledge - I wasn't taught how
to lay out a circuit board or to use a CAD package or to write an app.  A
modern CS degree at many institutions is vocational training in programming.
It's not the same thing.

Jon