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Comment by IshKebab | Hacker News Reader

I'm not really sure how I feel about universities (which should be teaching modern technologies and methods) teaching ancient 70s stuff like Unix.

Do we really want a new generation of people who think Unix was born perfect and cannot be improved upon?

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Maybe simplicity? Something that can be understood easily in a few weeks, and then you may start implementing whatever features you find useful. Oh, and Xv6 is buildable under 1 minute on modern machine, and don't need a custom-build toolchain.

>Do we really want a new generation of people who think Unix was born perfect and cannot be improved upon?

Yes. "Perfect" may be debatable (what is "perfect" anyway?), but it has lasted over half a century so they must have done something well!

I agree it definitely did lots well, but "it lasted over half a century" isn't a great argument for that. There are huge network effects with platform APIs that allow terrible things to persist simply because that's what everyone else uses.

New things might have been introduced, but fundamentals haven't changed. OS's then and now still have schedulers, memory managers, file systems, etc.

>which should be teaching modern technologies and methods

Ah yeah. Modern=good Ancient=Bad, that's why your car still has wheels right?

My car has wheels with vulcanised rubber tyres, integrated pressure sensors and hydraulic disc brakes. Just like the Romans had right?

It's not better, just for a different use-case. That's why every single universal-os is based in 60-90 tech. Your tires are useless for tanks or trains, but wheels are universal.

Let's see how good your tire's are in a chariot race:

https://www.seeker.com/secret-of-roman-race-chariots-found-2...

>>Any iron tire for racing would be a very thin strip of iron on the outside of the wooden rim, best when heat-shrunk on the wood, to consolidate the whole wheel.

Your base is ~unix=wheel and on top your pressure-sensor=Kubernetes (for example), below is your always on disk-brake=x86 ;)

It sounds like you can't imagine something fundamentally different to Unix. Not everything is built on Unix.

I would suggest looking up how Fuchsia works for example.

I would suggest looking up how OpenVMS works for example.

Why learn a Bullshit OS (fuchsia) when you can learn ~unix and cover 90% of usage.

Again Students are not stupid they can read and learn for themselves after learning the basics of a OS...what Xv6 is for.

But maybe you are that hidden genius professor from MIT that could teach everything much better. But then, why do we even talk, right?

>I would suggest looking up how Fuchsia works for example.

I would agree with you...after Fuschsia has proven itself in the real world for a few decades. At this point -it has not.

Your comment is almost certainly the stupidest thing I have ever read on HN.

I look forward to more insightful comments from you in this vein:

"I'm not sure how I feel about universities (which should be teaching modern history) teaching ancient 27BC stuff like the Roman Empire. Do you really want a new generation of people who think the Roman Empire was perfect and cannot be improved upon?"

I'm sure students would benefit more from MIT running courses such as "7.1729: An Introduction to 23 Not-Invented-Here JavaScript Frameworks" /s

This course isn't a history lesson. That is pretty clear if you read the course overview - https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2021/overview.html

> 23 Not-Invented-Here JavaScript Frameworks

We're talking about operating systems. Do you know the difference between an operating system and a Javascript framework?

So teaching c would be a bad idea? Your argumentation is pretty weak...to say it mildly.

Again, for historical reasons it's probably not a bad idea. But yes it would be a bad idea to teach students C and send them out into the world with the idea that writing C is how you're supposed to do it.

>But yes it would be a bad idea to teach students C and send them out into the world with the idea that writing C is how you're supposed to do it.

So your student have to tell Linus:

Sorry cant help you with your kernel that's not how you're supposed to do it, please learn Rust and rewrite your kernel RN! I don't know in what wannabe rainbow world you live.

BTW Students can think for themself, they honestly DONT believe you if you tell them unix or c nor rust are flawless, teaching something does not mean it's perfect but one way to do it.

Actually Linus is on the way to learn some Rust from those students....

Let's see how that experiment works out.

It is already working out on Android, regardless of what upstream does.

https://source.android.com/setup/build/rust/building-rust-mo...

Yes and? What do you want to say?

Exactly what I did, experiment works out.

Those who do not learn history will repeat the mistakes. Not sure you want the whole history it history is important.

Btw for politics essence of decision on many historical lesson are still great.

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