The Thirty Million Line Problem
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN recommends it, long as it is, as an eye-opening rant on software complexity and why systems became so complicated.
What it is
Casey Muratori's long talk arguing that modern software has ballooned to tens of millions of lines because of hardware and OS diversity. He proposes a stable ISA for entire system-on-a-chip packages and recalls when games shipped with their own boot disk.
Recommended by 11 HN commenters across 11 different months, 2018 to 2024.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec ropeadopepope · 2018-05 · on “Docker is a dangerous gamble”
This may be a little off topic, but has anybody watched Casey Muratori's proposal on SoC ISAs[0]? The video is long, but it's worth watching all of it. It sounds to me like a SoC ISA could make docker obsolete. If it ever happens, anyway. [0]: [this video]
Strong rec henning · 2024-10 · on “Show HN: One – A new React framework unifying web, native and local-first”
Yes, modern computer systems are unbelievably complicated from the application level down to the hardware. The consequences are absolutely devastating. [this video]
Recommends meuk · 2018-10 · on “Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (2000) [pdf]”
I think the problem is that current OSes are too complicated. What does a common user really want? I'd say text editing, making presentations, multimedia, and browsing. While these sound like simple things, text editing usually happens in a Word-like format, which - from what I've heard - is ridiculously complex. The same thing holds for browsing (simple browsers don't exist anymore, and many use the same back-end for rendering). For multimedia, USB is very important, which is a very complicated format to use correctly. Then, there are tens of codecs and formats for multimedia, each with their own idiosyncrasies and ambiguities in the specs (or deviations from the spec that are so common tha
Recommends worldsayshi · 2019-05 · on “Docker is vulnerable to a symlink-race attack”
If you'd like to venture further into this rabbit hole I can recommend "Preventing the Collapse of Civilization": [LINK] And "The Thirty Million Line Problem": [this video]
Recommends dsego · 2019-10 · on “Software Is Hard (2007)”
Have you seen the 30 million line problem* by Casey Muratori (of Handmade Hero fame)? There is an argument that a lot of today's complexity in software is an (unnecessary) byproduct of changes in hardware design. * [this video]
Recommends scruple · 2020-01 · on “Anti-patterns and malpractices in modern software development (2015)”
There is a related Jonathan Blow talk titled "Preventing the Collapse of Civilization" [0] that I came across recently from a HN post. You might be interested in watching it. Also, Casey Muratori's talk titled "The Thirty Million Line Problem" [1]. [0]: [LINK] [1]: [this video]
Recommends stephc_int13 · 2020-05 · on “Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?”
A quite well-known rant from Casey Muratori about a very similar issue: [this video] (For those who never saw it)
Recommends JamesSwift · 2021-04 · on “Tetris-OS: An operating system that only plays Tetris”
That might be what OS'es currently _are_, but I disagree that it is what an OS _is_. I think fundamentally an OS is as the OP uses it, a set of code that interfaces with all your hardware to make the computer function. Heres a good talk I came across in a HN comment a little while back [1] about how games used to be developed vs how they are today. [1] - [this video]