undefined | Better HN

0 pointsnull_ptr12y ago0 comments

My new-age VT-100 PC is still a general purpose computer, and if I want to use it as such I should be able to. I see the advantage of shipping it as a VT-100, but I don't see any advantage in blocking power users from unlocking its full potential.

Nobody wants to work on hobby projects that have no chance of ever running on real hardware. What's the point then? Even if you'll never get to run your hobby OS on real hardware, that possibility still serves to motivate the developer. Nobody likes to work on things they know beforehand nobody will ever use for anything.

As an example, coding a toy shell in JavaScript that runs in a web browser and prints some text to a canvas is not the same as coding a toy shell that can touch the actual file system and be used for real work.

Life is too short to write toy software for emulators, I want to write software that people use and get something out of. I'm an engineer, if I buy a computer it's because I want to make cool things with it and for it, not because I want a dumb terminal to connect to some rented server.

0 comments

3 comments · 1 top-level

derefr12y ago· 2 in thread

> Nobody wants to work on hobby projects that have no chance of ever running on real hardware.

I never said hobbyist OS projects won't run on real hardware; I said running on real hardware is a "1.0 feature." Which is to say, around the 0.9, you start taking some real test machines, disabling their boot protections, and putting your OS on them. You get it polished.

And then, only after that, you go and apply for a boot-signing certificate from the hardware makers. Which, because you now have a real, polished OS instead of a hobbyist project, they will give you. It's sensible enough: if they gave a cert to every hobbyist developer, one of them might just be a virus-writer; but there are only so many groups who actually end up with real, working, polished Operating Systems that Users will want to run. And it's easy enough to tell when a group has made one of those, and to sign their bootloader.

This is, if you'll note, pretty much the same logic behind the iOS development workflow. First, you deploy to test devices that are specifically configured with an "I am an Administrator, obey me" flag. Then, once you've proven out your software on those devices, you get it signed with a "this is allowed to run on regular User PCs" cert.

---

Also: if a "toy shell in Javascript" can both connect to the network, and use the browser's Javascript data-storage APIs to store data, then what makes it incapable of getting Real Work done? It's basically a (really slow) VM.

null_ptrOP12y ago

So what happens if the people in charge of giving certificates, approving marketplace apps, etc. decide they don't like me and give me the boot even if my product is perfectly fine? They're human, and humans screw each other for petty reasons and out of self interest all the time.

If someone buys a computer, why do there have to be barriers from getting and using software directly from the developer? This has everything to do with milking money from developers and making users' alternative choices as difficult and unpractical as possible. It's discouraging choice and diversity.

> Also: if a "toy shell in Javascript" can both connect to the network, and use the browser's Javascript data-storage APIs to store data, then what makes it incapable of getting Real Work done? It's basically a (really slow) VM.

So who wants to play with "basically a (really slow) VM"? Why should hobbyist developers be content with only having access to second rate capabilities? No thank you.

derefr12y ago

> So what happens if the people in charge of giving certificates ... decide they don't like me

Then the developers get angry and throw out the people in charge. Imagine, for example, what would happen if IANA arbitrarily stopped just a few people from getting domain names. We'd get a new IANA. (We can't do this with the "apps marketplace" vendors, though, and that is a problem. It's probably something that should be solved with an anti-trust suit or two.)

> If someone buys a computer, why do there have to be barriers from getting and using software directly from the developer?

Because--and this is the whole point of the Users/Administrators distinction--Users don't know enough about computers to distrust malicious software.

We put barriers between people and phishing sites, so they can't be tricked into giving their money away. We put barriers between children and in-app purchases, because they don't understand the consequences.

This is the same idea. Most people would go through whatever series of scary dialog boxes it took to run "cat_videos.exe". If you, an Administrator, were standing right there beside them, you'd grab the mouse from their hand and stop them, for their own good. We can't be there all the time. We want the OS to grab the mouse from their hand for their own good.

4 more replies

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse