Steve Yegge: Systems should never reboot(steve-yegge.blogspot.com)
steve-yegge.blogspot.com
Steve Yegge: Systems should never reboot
http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/01/pinocchio-problem.html
6 comments
> "...they all screwed up lexical scoping."
I have read a number of comments like this recently. I am very curious about what this implies but the person making the statement never gives an explanation.
I have read a number of comments like this recently. I am very curious about what this implies but the person making the statement never gives an explanation.
Yegge at his grand best. But he didn't mention the most lively of all living software: software that gets smarter with use - i.e. makes use of using machine learning. This is the software that feels most alive to its creator and users. It grows like a dog or a child. The software Stevey talks about merely grows like a city.
Welcome to Erlang :)
He missed one: every program expands until it can read email, or is replaced by one that does.
Zawinski's law. And the modern version is that every program attempts to expand until it becomes a social network.
Steve is right that systems should never have to boot. You can have a whole OS that operates like that. (The Smalltalk image started out as an OS. In the original ST-80 image, there are 4 primitives for moving the drive head out, moving it in, lifting it off the platter, and putting it down!)