A Talk With Syllable OS Lead Developer Kaj de Vos 121
angry tapir writes "I recently had a chance to interview Kaj de Vos, the lead developer of Syllable: An open source desktop operating system that's not based on Linux nor one of the BSDs. There's a write-up of the interview here, which includes some background on the project. I have also posted the full Q&A, which is very long but definitely worth a read."
Re:Why assembly? (Score:4, Insightful)
To summarise the article. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're only going to read one page of this article then read page five.
http://www.techworld.com.au/article/398892/developer_q_syllable_os/?pp=5 [techworld.com.au]
To summarise the thing that makes this different from everyone else is that the parts of an actual application are split up unix style. For example instead of having two or more applications taking your photo and taking out the red eye, the desktop would have thus functionality written once and the applications will simply glue all these standard pieces together.
My only criticism to this is that we already have this in the form of libraries. Perhaps what this guy is after is something more standardised and higher level then that but I don't see how that's not doable in linux.
Re:Why assembly? (Score:0, Insightful)
Er - I regularly get 3x, on systems with super-duper optimizing compilers (like Itanic) 5x is more typical. Typically the less the vendors say asm is needed, the more gains it gives you.
And sorry, 3x here, 3x there can easily give you a multiplicative 9x boost - won't always, but if you are coding in asm it's likely you are paying attention to the details as well. (Something OO languages are appallingly bad at).
And yes, I have managed to get performance boots of 20x with selective use of asm - not all that was the asm, but asm and care in coding (restructuring inner loops to avoid repeated computation etc) that's achievable.
Re:web.? (Score:2, Insightful)
Also in what way do you think www is dying? I'd wager that it's the default prefix for >99.9% of the internet.
If i'm typing or copying and pasting a domain name into a web browser (i.e., one i got from somewhere other than google) i always leave off the www because the results give me an insight into the company whose web site i'm looking at. If the domain name without www doesn't work at all, i know they don't know what they're doing and best avoided if possible. If it works, but redirects to the www version i know they sort of know what they're doing, but are living in the 90s, so definitely shouldn't be a first choice. If it works and doesn't redirect, i know they know what they're doing and they're up to date.
In my experience, more and more web sites are working without the www prefix. But, more importantly, more and more URLs are being published in advertising and print media without the www - none were a few years ago, but some people are finally realising that leaving off the www makes them look more professional. It also doesn't make them look like they think their customers are too stupid to know a web address if it hasn't got the www on the front (which they're not). The really smart ones capitalise the business name part of their domain names.
No www (or "http://"), plus capitalisation, is the most professional look. Everything else looks amateurish and outdated.
Re:NOT based on Linux? (Score:4, Insightful)
...OS/2 Warp ... but IBM screwed the pooch...
No kidding... Not to mention their marketing department didn't quite get the Star Trek based code names they were using... Half their material for "warp" looked more like bad acid trip kind of warp than "warp speed". And I have a poster somewhere from IBM that says OS/2 will "obliterate your work". Really... I don't think they "got it" at all...