[OT] Why did "enterprise" crap seem to win? (re: Virtualization, Java, Microsoft, Outsourcing, etc.)...

[markham breitbach]

Funny that this came up on the list the same day that I came across this
article as well. 

https://hackaday.com/2017/10/02/books-you-should-read-feynmans-appendix-to-the-challenger-disaster-report/

There's definitely a parallel, and some good lessons there.

-M


On 2017-10-04 8:10 AM, Alejandro Imass wrote:
> ... or did they?
>
> Hi all,
>
> You may be asking why would I post such a question (mostly rant) here.
> The reason is because I was curious at the reaction to this thread:
> https://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=117621+0+archive/2017/freebsd-questions/20170820.freebsd-questions
>
> It seems that people who use and support FreeBSD have a similar
> mindset in that we think that the Unix model is mostly good, and are
> many time baffled with the direction the "industry" takes, for the
> most part. So what better outlet to post this rant ;-) So pls. take
> this thread just a food for thought:
>
> On operating systems and languages
> ---------------------------------------------------
>
> Why did C++ and Java seem win over C and shared object libraries?
>
> In the Unix model the general philosophy is precisely that is made up
> of tiny little things that do one thing really, really well and are
> able to operate with other tiny things by means of a common protocol
> such as pipes etc.
>
> What more encapsulation than shared objects, header files, and C
> structs? if you want higher level there is for example, Perl with an
> elegant XS interface to C which can in turn leverage all the
> underlying O/S. Not only that, Perl (amongst other great "scripting"
> langs) is multi-paradigm allowing you write software to tackle
> problems in different ways, which are much more clearer than trying to
> stick a square peg in a round hole approach of single paradigm
> languages such as Java.
>
> And only after 30 years or so, do you start seeing some functional
> paradigms come to Java and new languages over the JVM such as Scala.
> When in fact these things have been with us for ages since Scheme,
> Perl, etc. ? and these integrate beautifully with the underlying O/S.
> Why dis the industry degrade the languages as "scripting languages"
> when in fact this is precisely what you want: simplicity, elegance and
> tight integration to the O/S!
>
> So why did the Java Virtual Machine concept win, instead of leveraging
> the underlying O/S ? Was portability the only mermaid song ? or was it
> the promise of a language to protect us from the mediocre programmer ?
> What is the point of portability if it doesn't really leverage the
> underlying O/S? I personally think portability is not only a myth
> (i.e. Java is not really portable as people may think) and it's
> actually pretty stupid and it's actually what you DON'T want.
>
> What you really want IMHO is a fined-tuned architecture that not only
> plays well with the underlying O/S but that actually leverages the
> O/S, which makes it NOT portable by definition. Why do we want
> portability in the first place? Does portability foster competition
> and innovation or just makes everybody mediocre at best? Does it
> increase security or performance? NO, it's actually the total
> opposite!
>
> Code reusability is mostly bullshit too, and what you wind up with,
> AGAIN, is piles over piles of crap, wheel re-invention and duplication
> of efforts. A quick look to the Java ecosystem is enough to show this
> is fundamentally flawed. Even the simplest Java application winds up
> bloated with megabytes (sometimes gigabytes) of crap in there that is
> not doing anything but hampering performance and opening up all sorts
> of security holes. The same goes for the Windows world and C++ where
> it gets even worse as every application you install is able to
> overwrite critical system libraries.
>
> On Virtualization and Outsourcing
> ----------------------------------------------------------
>
> Why did virtualization and outsourcing (AWS) seem to win over concepts
> such a chroot and FreeBSD Jails and a good old sysadmin?  Why do we
> really need full virtualization in the first place? Does it help in
> performance or security? Does it reduce costs? On the contrary it does
> neither, at least IMHO.
>
> If you need to "slice" your hardware, e.g. : to avoid contamination of
> the base system, to be able to run several environments in a single
> machine, for prototyping, etc. the concept of a container such as
> FreeBSD Jails is more than enough, IMO. When you add things like
> EzJail on top, why would you need more than that?
>
> HTF did we get such aberrations as Docker on an already virtualized
> environment such as AWS??? I mean WTF is that? really? Why pile up all
> those layers of shit to get what you could get with a real hardware
> with FreeBSD and EzJail ?
>
> I write these reflections at a time when all these security breaches
> such as Yahoo's 3 billion account breach and Equifax 145 million and
> much more serious breach are happening and the situation will only get
> worse because of all the piles, over piles and piles of shit the most
> companies run on.
>
> So how did we get here? Why does industry insist on complicating stuff
> instead of a complete back to basics approach? Why is the answer to
> these problems is more and more outsourcing and throwing even more
> piles of crap and wasting money in the hopes that will fix the
> fundamentally broken systems we have in place? What we need is a
> radical back to basics approach to software engineering.
>
> Well at least not ALL industry. I think Apple made the right choice
> when they decided to embrace NeXT (which is heavily based and inspired
> on FreeBSD) and Objective-C from the start, creating highly-tuned
> systems that are not only NOT portable in software terms but not even
> portable in hardware terms! The choice of tight integration between
> hardware, O/S and application software is the way of the future, which
> is actually the way of the past, invented by Unix and the original
> hackers since the dawn of computing. Everything else, is just "shit".
> Borrowing the late Jobs' favourite word to describe just that: shit.
>
> Pardon the rant and have a wonderful day.