On Fri, Jun 22, 2001 at 11:35:00AM -0700, Jim Benson wrote:
> 
>  It seems to be part of the software mentality to go 'back to the future'.
> You hear things like, "In 1969 I used to solve the exact same problem in
> less than 278 lovingly hand crafted, hand assembled instructions that I
> hacked in through the front console". Look at the groundswell support for
> Linux in the last few years. Apparently folks think it's a clever idea, I
> guess I should say revolution, to spend a whole lot of time, energy and
> effort rebuilding 30 year old operating systems. "It's really good, it's
> written in assembler ( OK C, the same thing ). That makes if fast and small.
> It's open source!!!". Which, of course, makes it so much different than the
> GNU and BSD variations of Unix. Or, software reanimates old ideas into
> something "new" like Java. Round and round, the whole thing looks pretty
> stuck to me.
>

Granted, there is a lot of junk being put forward as "innovation."
But with respect to eg Linux, I think that there is something to
be said for a 25 or 30 year old design that was simple and general
enough to have held up this long, especially if it serves as the
basis for good new work. Squeak seems to be a case in point, and
Linux is another. Somebody just "burned the disk packs" on Unix,
and it came back stronger than ever.

Dave