Re: Is Systems Software Research Irrelevant

[address@hidden (Kragen Sitaker)]

Daniel Weinreb writes:
> Well, as a matter of fact, Windows XP is vastly superior to the
> Windows available in 1990!

Well, I might be selectively blind, but it looks to me like Windows XP
is mostly superior to Windows 3.0 by adopting OS features from the
1970s, UI features from the 1980s, and Web features.  The Web features
are the only ones that tend to disprove his thesis, and even they
didn't come from "systems software research".

> [quoting Rob Pike]
> There has been much talk about component architectures but
> only one true success: Unix pipes.

I'd be interested in your views on this.  From my POV, the Web is a
successful component architecture, as is COM.  What else is?

-- 
<kragen@pobox.com>       Kragen Sitaker     <http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/>
[around 1998-12-23], it is amazing to watch fear and loathing and greed at
play with the more speculative Internet stocks.  To call this a tulip
craze would be a vast understatement. -- Adam Rifkin, <adam@cs.caltech.edu>