by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Wednesday February 15, 2017 @03:24PM (#53875277)
OK, going off on AC rant here:
The biggest problem with modern OS/UI/Framework development is: everything is built on old rusty scaffolds that fall and break all the time.
When you are doing web development, this isn't a problem unless what you are developing is life/death critical. Some users may think that it is life/death critical, but the reality is that no one is going to die if they can't see the latest gossip trending on their social-media-de-jure site.
No, mission critical stuff like medical equipment, stock markets, moon rockets, etc...this stuff has to run right. But once we start building on code that someone wrote 5 years ago and it used a framework that was popular 5 years before that, and the guy who started the framework made the assumption that no one would use this stuff 10 years from now...you get the picture.
So...we need to start looking from the ground-up. Is the foundation solid or are we building on top of a sinkhole? A lot of people started looking at the foundation languages that we are writing our operating systems with (C, C++, etc.) and are now suggesting better alternative tools (D, Rust, Go, Swift) that do their best not to let developers make stupid mistakes (buffer overrun, stack overflow, etc.) that allows bad actors to take advantage of those stupid mistakes. And a mistake at a low level of an OS or framework affects a lot of shit (Heartbleed?).
Sure, we can build solid foundations using the tools we have (C, C++, etc.) as long as the people using those tools are 100% error proof. News flash: people are human and prone to make mistakes. So, let's start making better use of the tools that don't let us break important stuff unintentionally. So even if we have to reinvent the wheel in a new language, in the end it's worth it for not having to deal with the frustration because someone forgot to dot an "i" or cross a "t" in code we didn't even write.
Here's my rant... (Score:0)
OK, going off on AC rant here:
The biggest problem with modern OS/UI/Framework development is: everything is built on old rusty scaffolds that fall and break all the time.
When you are doing web development, this isn't a problem unless what you are developing is life/death critical. Some users may think that it is life/death critical, but the reality is that no one is going to die if they can't see the latest gossip trending on their social-media-de-jure site.
No, mission critical stuff like medical equipment, stock markets, moon rockets, etc...this stuff has to run right. But once we start building on code that someone wrote 5 years ago and it used a framework that was popular 5 years before that, and the guy who started the framework made the assumption that no one would use this stuff 10 years from now...you get the picture.
So...we need to start looking from the ground-up. Is the foundation solid or are we building on top of a sinkhole? A lot of people started looking at the foundation languages that we are writing our operating systems with (C, C++, etc.) and are now suggesting better alternative tools (D, Rust, Go, Swift) that do their best not to let developers make stupid mistakes (buffer overrun, stack overflow, etc.) that allows bad actors to take advantage of those stupid mistakes. And a mistake at a low level of an OS or framework affects a lot of shit (Heartbleed?).
Sure, we can build solid foundations using the tools we have (C, C++, etc.) as long as the people using those tools are 100% error proof. News flash: people are human and prone to make mistakes. So, let's start making better use of the tools that don't let us break important stuff unintentionally. So even if we have to reinvent the wheel in a new language, in the end it's worth it for not having to deal with the frustration because someone forgot to dot an "i" or cross a "t" in code we didn't even write.