Passing Through (ireland.delete@this.web.ie) on August 18, 2018 1:54 pm wrote:
> Passing Through (ireland.delete@this.web.ie) on August 18, 2018 1:34 pm wrote:
> >
> > So, one really does need a proliferation of some kind of 'hardware' out there, that all of these people
> > at different levels, can use to establish a baseline relationship, between each other's projects, and
> > each other's focus and dedication. Hardware actually is good at establishing that baseline between
> > such a distributed collaboration effort. Because Linus might happen to be running 'X' distribution
> > of his OS, with such as such kernel revision. The guy doing the application maintenance might be running
> > something else. The baseline that connects them together therefore is, 'the hardware'.
> >
>
> One other thing.
>
> This ain't the nineties any longer. The 1990's had something important, that ironically, isn't there now.
>
> The difference between the 1990's and now, is that back then you had a guaranteed proliferation of
> one kind of system, x86 systems made by Intel, that were used as both the platform for development
> and the platform for usage. That's really what enabled things like the massively distributed engineering
> efforts of many open source projects to flourish over the time that they did. However, that's not quite
> what one has one phones. And someone like Google or whomever, would quickly want to start realizing
> it. They're building this entire smartphone universe on top of a technology, that relies on a similar
> widely distributed effort by engineers. And if they don't want the thing to all buckle very fast, then
> someone has to start putting hands into a pocket and coming out with ultrabooks. I'd imagine that something
> like a beefed up version of the Chromebook, is actually what we're talking about? But not a sealed
> unit, that's only good for reading e-mails and social media. A real tool.
>
> Is there any good reason that companies with the amount of resource they have, aren't
> already providing these things? Any good reason at all, other than myopia?

I think it's less myopia than that
- anything big takes longer than you EXPECT to happen but then
- happens FASTER than you expected.

Basically expectations have a much lousier intuition about timing than they do about what makes sense. Even if you could see, say 5 yrs ago, that ARM's time in the sun was coming, it takes time to build up EVERYTHING that's required to convert from a world where your customers are a few phone companies to one where some customers want PCs and independent dev kits and such.

And the first time round these things are easier because people are doing everything in an amateur fashion, seeing what works and tolerating sloppiness, because there is no alternative. Once there is a functional alternative, that sloppiness of the first time round is unacceptable. One thing that deeply impresses me every time I read the listserv's of the people doing serious work in today's big tech companies is how much more professional they are than we were back thirty years ago. This doesn't mean they are smarter or harder working or whatever; it just means they are operating in a different environment with different expectations. This different environment means things are much higher quality when they are released, absolutely; but it also means things (especially big de novo projects) happen much more slowly than they did when we were kids.