Everything split from "GUI Design" ;)

[bubach]

if you can do OSD, then you can do any kind of programming

You can, but many things may be as hard or harder...
I doubt that I would find it easy to do a OpenGL demo for Windows even if I am working on my own OS.

[B.E]

if you can do OSD, then you can do any kind of programming

You can, but many things may be as hard or harder...
I doubt that I would find it easy to do a OpenGL demo for Windows even if I am working on my own OS.

I done OpenGL and Direct3D 9 and still think OSDev is rather easy.

[AxelDominatoR]

I agree. Programming OpenGL is hard as writing a little OS, if not harder
( never used DirectX however... )

[Brendan]

Hi,

I agree. Programming OpenGL is hard as writing a little OS, if not harder
( never used DirectX however... )

I've done very little with DirectX or OpenGL, but I did write my own polygon renderer once that converted polygons into horizontal strips with starting and ending Z, backface removal, martix/3D co-ords/normals, zoom/focal length, etc (mostly for "self-education"). I imagine with VisualBasic, Delphi or something DirectX wouldn't be too hard.

As for OS's, if they are done for learning it depends on how much and how well you want to learn, and small toy OS's are easy. If you attempt a "commercial quality" OS that tries to be as good or better than windows/linux...

In an attempt to get this back on topic, compare a simple GUI and an internationalized GUI. You'd need a different set of strings for each language (e.g. "Exit", "Sortie", "Ausgang", etc) and full Unicode support including scalable fonts and code to draw strings from right to left (e.g. Arabic), top to bottom (e.g. Chinese), and any combination (e.g. "The Arabic person said '?tfel ot thgiR'."). It could easily take a year just to be able to display dates in some languages properly, while a simple OS could use something like "printf("%d, %d, %d", day, month, year);".

Now consider writing the OS's code to support OpenGL (or DirectX or it's equivelent), where anything the video driver (and/or video card) doesn't support has to be done in software, like textured 3D polygon rendering, bump mapping and fog in all colour depths. IMHO this alone would be more difficult that writing an application that relies on existing OpenGL/DirectX software (even though it's only a small part of the OS)...


Cheers,

Brendan

[keeper]

the indirect meanign there was, if you can do OSDev then you can do any kind of programming, was ment to send the message that, if your dedicated enough, then you can learn, and use any programming system to its maxamum.

[Pype.Clicker]

the indirect meanign there was, if you can do OSDev then you can do any kind of programming, was ment to send the message that, if your dedicated enough, then you can learn, and use any programming system to its maxamum.

That reminds me of a part of "The Programming TAO"

There was once a programmer who was attached to the court of the warlord of Wu. The warlord asked the programmer: "Which is easier to design: an accounting package or an operating system?"

"An operating system," replied the programmer.

The warlord uttered an exclamation of disbelief. "Surely an accounting package is trivial next to the complexity of an operating system," he said.

"Not so," said the programmer. "When designing an accounting package, the programmer operates as a mediator between people having different ideas: how it must operate, how its reports must appear, and how it must conform to the tax laws.
By contrast, an operating system is not limited by outside appearances. When designing an operating system, the programmer seeks the simplest harmony between machine and ideas. This is why an operating system is easier to design."

The warlord of Wu nodded and smiled. "That is all good and well, but which is easier to debug?"

The programmer made no reply.

[distantvoices]

if the programmer had his wits together and be of the blunt and honest sort, he'd simply say "The accounting application - but where 'd be the fun if each and every thing were easy *gg*"

And by the way, the programmers point of view: not limited by outside appearances ... hardware to talk to, programs to provide an interface to ... oh syscall where art thou? I dare say this can be nicely argued about.