When I discovered Linux and FreeBSD as a 15 year old, I was absolutely amazed by what I saw, coming from the world of Windows with some elementary school memories of the classic Mac OS sprinkled in. My exploring these *nix variants and learning about their development and history led to my decision to major in computer science and pursue a career in systems software research. I still have a high level of respect for people like Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Bill Joy, and Marshall Kirk McKusick. I had a dream of working for Sun before the Oracle acquisition and working on projects like ZFS.
But lately I’ve been studying systems that for whatever reason ended up losing out in the marketplace despite having really interesting design decisions and features that would be welcome today. Although I like the classic Mac OS, NeXT, and the modern macOS, I wish Steve Jobs would have “copied” all of Smalltalk and then added Mac-like touches to it. I also wish that Genera were open-sourced instead of the current situation where it’s difficult to obtain legally and inexpensively. I have a dream of writing a modern OS inspired by Genera, Smalltalk, and Apple’s OpenDoc, but writing a new OS is a major undertaking.
Maybe it’s my inner romantic speaking, or maybe I’m just drawn to beautiful things, but I’ve always been attracted to “what could have been” things. Hopefully one day we’ll have a “right thing” OS again, and maybe one day we’ll have an alternative to the Web that isn’t as much of a technology hodgepodge.
I had a similar path, from MS-DOS 5 / Amiga OS point of view, something like SGI seemed great and I dived into Linux zealotry a couple of years later.
But then a rich library at university campus opened my mind to other models of computing and sundenly pure old UNIX wasn't that interesting any longer, only NeXT, which used UNIX compatibility more for winning over Sun's customers than anything else.
Funny, for me NeXT pretty much was Smalltalk + Mac + Unix.
And there were mechanisms for an OpenDoc-like system of embedded content (maybe more like OLE). While the rough idea of OpenDoc was and is appealing, I don't think that version of the idea is actually tenable.
Alas, since it was killed, it sort of lives on and occupies that space as an ideal version of the rough idea, rather than as an artefact that can be criticised and improved upon.
But lately I’ve been studying systems that for whatever reason ended up losing out in the marketplace despite having really interesting design decisions and features that would be welcome today. Although I like the classic Mac OS, NeXT, and the modern macOS, I wish Steve Jobs would have “copied” all of Smalltalk and then added Mac-like touches to it. I also wish that Genera were open-sourced instead of the current situation where it’s difficult to obtain legally and inexpensively. I have a dream of writing a modern OS inspired by Genera, Smalltalk, and Apple’s OpenDoc, but writing a new OS is a major undertaking.
Maybe it’s my inner romantic speaking, or maybe I’m just drawn to beautiful things, but I’ve always been attracted to “what could have been” things. Hopefully one day we’ll have a “right thing” OS again, and maybe one day we’ll have an alternative to the Web that isn’t as much of a technology hodgepodge.