It's obvious to me that you're not even smart enough to understand the difference between "trying to succeed" and "assuming you will succeed"; but I have little reason to care and it's more entertaining for me to just roll with it, so...Schol-R-LEA wrote:But that's my point: that your purist approach is likely to ruin your chances of success, as is your apparent assumption that you will succeed. The problem is that while excellence is a necessary condition for success, it is never a sufficient one, and it generally is not the key factor in a product's acceptance.Brendan wrote:There are people who are writing an OS just for fun, and that's fine. There are people who are writing an OS to learn, and that's fine too.
Then there's people who want to go further than just "fun" or "learning" but for one reason or another don't try. Then there's people like me, who are willing to try (despite the odds) and therefore need to do whatever they can to increase their chances.
Failure isn't possible unless I stop trying (e.g. if I finish my OS and it doesn't succeed I can just try again, and I can keep writing new OSs until one does succeed). I won't stop trying voluntarily. There are only 2 possible outcomes - either I will succeed eventually, or I'll be forced to stop before I succeed (e.g. I'll die trying). However; if I'm forced to stop trying, then maybe someone will have been inspired by what I achieved or will learn something from my attempts, and will use whatever they've gained from my work to achieve their own success. If that happens, I will be responsible for a small part of their success. It's "partial success by proxy", and means that even my death isn't enough to guarantee 100% failure.
In comparison; most OS developers reach "guaranteed 100% failure" before they begin, simply because they choose not to try.
Does any of this rambling (some snipped) have a relevant point? Are you saying that Unix was technically superior because it was more adaptable and "won" because it was technically superior (more adaptable)? Alternatively, are you carefully selecting what you do/don't consider "technically superior" to make lies seem plausible?Schol-R-LEA wrote:Obviously, being a purist myself, I have no problem with hewing to an impractically idealistic line. You seem to think you can do that and still succeed in the marketplace, and that is what I am call you out on.
Have you ever read the Worse is Better papers (a series of essays on the practical aspects of 'success' in the software world)? The original was written by Richard Gabriel, one of the designers of the Symbolics lisp machines and a member of the Common Lisp standards committee, as a chapter in an extended essay on why the Lisp Machines and Lisp in general had fallen out of favor in the late 1980s. His contention was that Unix, while technically inferior in many ways (not only to Genera but also Tenex, ITS, WAITS, RSX, and several other contemporary operating systems), was more 'adaptable' - or in modern terms, agile - because it was inexpensive to license, portable, had lower hardware requirements than most of the other systems then in use, was written to require lowest common denominator of hardware features (not the same thing as the previous statement, but related), and provided just enough of a system to support the basic operations, which was just enough combined with the lower up-front cost that the TCO issues were ignored.
No. What happened here is that Sourcer asked everyone if they implement user-space programs themselves or ported their user-space; and I said "neither, my plan is to make my OS impressive"; and then I got attacked by a rabid rambling retard because I wrote an honest answer.Schol-R-LEA wrote:But even this isn't the real problem: the real problem is that, despite claims to the contrary, you frequently criticize others here for not having the same ambitions you do, and for failing to adopt your puritanical outlook at the same time. You don't seem to realize that you are trying to impose your own attitudes about successful operating systems on people who are just trying to learn. You say you support the more casual members, but your actions say otherwise.
Cheers,
Brendan
