Re: [TUHS] Favorite unix design principles?

[Tyler Adams <coppero1237@gmail.com>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 4079 bytes --]

Fair points about macOS, I hated using my mac in 2018 (thankfully I've
lived in linux bliss since), but I wouldn't say macOS is representative of
the software industry as a whole. Especially as you said iOS is Apple's
real cash cow and apple's been focusing on better *mac hardware *and from
what I hear that M1 delivers*.*

The modern software industry is mostly over the browser (or an app), and
honestly almost every site I use these days is pretty fast and stable.
Unless it has too many ads.

 Tyler


On Sat, Jan 30, 2021 at 11:28 PM Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:

> Tyler - I'm with Jon on this.  I'll pick on Apple here.  It used to be a
> huge difference between MSFT SW and MacOS was that the systems folks at
> Apple really tested the system and the result was that Mac OS with way
> really stable.   My system never panic'ed except when I ran Windows under
> parallels.   After 3-4 years ago, that stopped being true.  Crashes occur,
> just like Windows BSD.   It's not unusual for my Mac to panic just letting
> it run overnight - which is just backups and the like.  Yes, I have a
> multiple monitors, a zillion windows open etc..
>
>
> I come downstairs and the screen is blank (it should be, I have it turn
> off after no activity), but I move the mouse or try to type something  --
> nothing wakes the system up again.  I've chased it to Mac OS running out of
> memory and not gracefully handling the lowe memory situation.  Sad, I have
> 16G of RAM a 1T SSD and many TB of memory on Thunderbolt 3 connectivity.
>
> Look I grew up with a 256K byte RAM Unix V6 system on an 11/34, 3 RK05s
> and an RK07 for storage.  We swapped.  Yeah, I never ran a window manager,
> but he had a number of 9600K terminals on DH11's and we were happy.  You
> could see it swapping like mad, but that system never crashed.  It just ran
> and ran and ran.
>
> IMO, this is what I think Jon is referring.   Those systems were stable
> because we tested them and found and fixed the issue.   These days, Apple
> no longer cares about Mac OS because iOS is where they now put their
> effort, although I'm not super impressed there either, but I also don't
> push it like I do Mac OS.  Sad really.   If I could get the day-2-day
> applications that I need to work on FreeBSD, I suspect I would be there in
> a heartbeat.
>
> Clem
> ᐧ
>
> On Sat, Jan 30, 2021 at 3:07 PM Tyler Adams <coppero1237@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Really? Except for one particularly incompetent team, I cannot recall
>> working with nor reviewing code that sacrificed clarity for performance.
>>
>>  Tyler
>>
>>
>> On Sat, Jan 30, 2021 at 9:51 PM Jon Steinhart <jon@fourwinds.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Tyler Adams writes:
>>> >
>>> > For sure, I've seen at least two interesting changes:
>>> > - market forces have pushed fast iteration and fast prototyping into
>>> the
>>> > mainstream in the form of Silicon valley "fail fast" culture and the
>>> > "agile" culture. This, over the disastrous "waterfall" style, has led
>>> to a
>>> > momentous improvement in overall productivity improvements.
>>> > - As coders get pulled away from the machine and performance is less
>>> and
>>> > less in coders hands, engineers aren't sucked into (premature)
>>> optimization
>>> > as much.
>>>
>>> It's interesting in more than one way.
>>>
>>> The "fail fast" culture seems to result in a lot more failure than I find
>>> acceptable.
>>>
>>> As performance is less in coders hands, performance is getting worse.  I
>>> haven't seen less premature optimization, I've just seen more premature
>>> optimization that didn't optimize anything.
>>>
>>> My take is that the above changes have resulted in less reliable products
>>> with poor performance being delivered more quickly.  I'm just kind of
>>> weird
>>> in that I'd prefer better products delivered more slowly.  Especially
>>> since
>>> much of what counts as a product these days is just churn to keep people
>>> buying, not to provide things that are actually useful.
>>>
>>

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 6295 bytes --]