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Re: Opining on "modern" development practices (was Re: Merging the “bina
From: |
Katherine Cox-Buday |
Subject: |
Re: Opining on "modern" development practices (was Re: Merging the “binary” NPM importer?) |
Date: |
Fri, 29 Oct 2021 09:54:42 -0500 |
User-agent: |
Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/27.2 (gnu/linux) |
Ludovic Courtès <ludo@gnu.org> writes:
> Nope! You’ve probably noticed that the Hurd isn’t known as a lively and
> successful project, and then there are things like the Critique¹ or work
> on porting the Hurd to the L4 microkernel which, while showing the
> “right” direction research-wise, have also had IMO the effect of
> suggesting that it’s never going to be good enough.
>
> I think a project needs to be aware of its shortcomings, but it also
> needs achievable milestones, and it needs to refrain from elitism.
>
> ¹ http://walfield.org/papers/200707-walfield-critique-of-the-GNU-Hurd.pdf
Yes, I'm generally aware of the challenges the Hurd (and other micro kernels)
have had taking off. I'm not clear on whether this is because monolithic
kernels are intrinsically better (is this yet another example of worse is
better?), or because of an organizational expression of worse is better.
I happened to be watching John Carmack speak last night. I haven't watched many
of his talks, but he seems like a consummate pragmatist. I've always admired
people like this because it's so opposite of my own idealistic tendencies. One
thing he said in particular seems relevant:
https://youtu.be/BnSUk0je6oo?t=883
"The metaverse is a honeypot trap for astronaut architects."
I.e. he was arguing against trying to build (read: architect) the metaverse
because it's a great way to either not get anything useful done, or to get the
wrong thing done.
I guess I've been circling around this philosophy for awhile, but I think I'm
going to let it cross over into being my working theory of how to build useful
software (among other things in life): worse is better, and collect as many
forcing factors as you can, as early as you can. I wonder how I can apply this
to Guix.
> See <https://issues.guix.gnu.org/49169>.
Thank you for the link!
--
Katherine
- Re: Merging the “binary” NPM importer?, (continued)
- Re: Merging the “binary” NPM importer?, Katherine Cox-Buday, 2021/10/08
- Re: Merging the “binary” NPM importer?, Timothy Sample, 2021/10/12
- Re: Merging the “binary” NPM importer?, Maxim Cournoyer, 2021/10/13
- Re: Merging the “binary” NPM importer?, Ludovic Courtès, 2021/10/14
- Opining on "modern" development practices (was Re: Merging the “binary” NPM importer?), Katherine Cox-Buday, 2021/10/14
- Re: Opining on "modern" development practices (was Re: Merging the “binary” NPM importer?), Ludovic Courtès, 2021/10/21
- Re: Opining on "modern" development practices (was Re: Merging the “binary” NPM importer?), Katherine Cox-Buday, 2021/10/28
- Re: Opining on "modern" development practices (was Re: Merging the “binary” NPM importer?), Ludovic Courtès, 2021/10/29
- Re: Opining on "modern" development practices (was Re: Merging the “binary” NPM importer?),
Katherine Cox-Buday <=