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@TradeMinister
> What I am saying, though, is that the usual course of action is that the big, ugly thing is rewritten rather than pared down and simplified (and the new thing eventually becomes even more bloated).
I think in that is in part because the big, ugly thing isn't firewalled into modules or layers. I remember even in v7+ Unix, if one wanted to rewrite even a significant function right, one had to trace down all the statics, externals, everything the fn messed with that something outside might also mess with. TCP/IP probably could have been written as a single protocol with greater efficiency, but having IP separate meant one could add UDP, and theoretically tinker with UDP and TCP and such without breaking IP.
So, with a big non-modularized codebase like BSD, and an endless stream of students tinkering for a few years, one could actually see in the code that instead of ever taking anything out, they'd just add more, so the 4.1c BSD listing was I think at least 2 or 3 times the size of our v7 kernel which I'd brought up to sys5 syscall interface, but didn't do much or anything more, except, OK, relocation/protection, because it was written for VAX, but still.
> > Used to be some guy named mib (aka Elizabeth?), good someone else took over, but maybe too late.
> Before that; this is the guy that was working on it in 1990. He went over to the dark side, he's at Google, last I heard. (You might have met him at some point, I don't know; he was Michael Bushnell
Yeah, that mib. I sort of got the impression he was really neurotic/autistic ("Elizabeth", unless I'm thinking of someone else, maybe the guy I worked on writing a GTK rewrite of kernel make, also annoying, project petered out) and no one could work with him, is why Hurd became a historical footnote
> until he got inducted into the Brotherhood of St. Gregory, some sort of Episcopalian thing.
Makes sense.
> Steak and clam chowder yesterday, steak and kale today. Maybe I'll put some burgers away tomorrow, but I am hacking today, and can't risk eating too many burgers and getting sluggish.
I'm coming over.
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@TradeMinister
> The design beauty of the microkernel approach is you just write a linux or BSD server.
What I am saying, though, is that the usual course of action is that the big, ugly thing is rewritten rather than pared down and simplified (and the new thing eventually becomes even more bloated).
> Used to be some guy named mib (aka Elizabeth?), good someone else took over, but maybe too late.
Before that; this is the guy that was working on it in 1990. He went over to the dark side, he's at Google, last I heard. (You might have met him at some point, I don't know; he was Michael Bushnell until he got inducted into the Brotherhood of St. Gregory, some sort of Episcopalian thing. You see his name in the AUTHORS file once in a while for GNU stuff, he's in the Plan 9 fortunes file twice.)
> I can only imagine how many cheesburgers.
Steak and clam chowder yesterday, steak and kale today. Maybe I'll put some burgers away tomorrow, but I am hacking today, and can't risk eating too many burgers and getting sluggish.
> You'd like Argentina: meat with a side of meat, when anyone can afford it.
So I hear!