Re: [dev] Suckless operating system

On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 12:38 AM, Connor Lane Smith <cls_AT_lubutu.com> wrote:
> On 14 June 2010 00:16, David Tweed <david.tweed_AT_gmail.com> wrote:
>> One of the issues to consider is that what computers are used for
>> changes with time, and decisions that one may classify as "the
>> suckless way of doing things" at one point in time may mean that it's
>> not effectively useable in some future situations.
>
> If the system is sufficiently modular it should be relatively future-proof.

I meant to suggest that design decisions and architectures might need
changing as new use cases come to light rather than that a single
design should be future proof-ish, and that this is in fact desirable.
However that means that saying something is "suckless" has to be
implicitly qualified with "for current needs". To pick a really simple
example, consider the changes to booting that happened since the
arrival of netbooks. What was once a relatively rare process, with the
corresponding "suckless" design being to keep things simple, has
become something where sub 5s booting is wanted, which requires more
complicated techniques. That's not to say that old-style booting was
wrong for the time it was designed, but the criteria now are different
and consequently the most elegant solution is now different.

-- 
cheers, dave tweed__________________________
computer vision reasearcher: david.tweed_AT_gmail.com
"while having code so boring anyone can maintain it, use Python." --
attempted insult seen on slashdot