[HN Gopher] Stone knives and bear skins - there is no money in t...
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Stone knives and bear skins - there is no money in tools
Author : sizzle
Score : 25 points
Date : 2023-07-25 21:18 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (queue.acm.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (queue.acm.org)
| sanxiyn wrote:
| Being against a kernel debugger is one of the worst decision
| Linux ever made. Thankfully those days are behind us.
|
| https://lwn.net/Articles/270089/
|
| Linus Torvalds, in paraphrase:
|
| > I happen to believe that stone knives and bear skins force
| people to think about their problem on a different level.
|
| This is exactly as ridiculous as it sounds.
| kbenson wrote:
| It's ridiculous, but at the simplest level, it's not wrong.
| Your tools or the lack thereof will change how you think about
| things, for better _or worse_ depending on the situation.
|
| If your goal is putting venison on the table tonight, vs
| understanding deer behavior and herd migration and when deer
| are even in the area in enough numbers and so can even be
| thought of as a viable food source, a stone knife and a bear
| skin as tools might promote (or force through necessity) better
| understanding than a hunting rifle and a large puffy jacket.
|
| That doesn't mean it's "better" or that everyone should be
| using shitty tools, but it is food for thought, and that
| perhaps doing it a few times is a learning experience that
| isn't all negative.
| m463 wrote:
| kernel debugging on linux sucks (IMHO)
|
| I've tried it and it is really hard to get even the most basic
| debug output - a symbol'd stack trace of a crash.
|
| If you can't get it at runtime, you need a kernel dump, and
| trying to get one is a mess. Once you have it, it is hard to
| match up the dump to the symbols. I believe some of the tools
| were kernel-version specific and I think when kernel 5 came out
| they didn't work.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Yeah, I think he overstates the case. I do see people who have
| become overly dependent on debuggers and that has adversely
| affected their debugging skills -- but that isn't an indictment
| of debuggers.
| version_five wrote:
| > A venture capitalist once told me, "There is no money in
| tools."
|
| That suggests he's saying there is not upside in a portfolio of
| tool companies. Following average VC advice gives average VC
| results. If everyone listened to this kind of stuff we'd be awash
| is generic SaaS CRM stuff...oh
| honeybadger1 wrote:
| While this essay serves as an interesting critique of the current
| state of operating systems and their development, it perhaps
| falls prey to the very flaw it seeks to highlight - the tendency
| to oversimplify the complexities inherent in systems software
| development and to yearn for a 'perfect' solution that is largely
| a figment of the author's imagination.
| ggm wrote:
| There no money in tools: The Dutch company ASML would like to
| talk to you.
|
| The article does actually say that in highly specialised niches
| tool making is fantastically lucrative. So, don't mistake the
| headline for ground truth.
|
| Also there is good reason to believe tool making since flint
| knapping has been high status, and demands surplus production to
| liberate skilled labour to making tools which have immensely high
| use value: tools are magnifiers of human productivity and are
| worth a lot.
|
| The point is that when commodities are cheap, and tools like gdb
| can be considered a commodity, the relative advantage of "a
| better one" has to be weighed up with using a screwdriver as a
| hammer. Thus printf() debugging.
| trollerator23 wrote:
| In _software_ tools. Hardware tools are hardware.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Well said. I know there's money in tools because I've been
| making money making and selling tools for a long time.
|
| But not every kind of tool. A gdb replacement would be a hard
| sell unless it managed to actually perform miracles. But
| specialty tools of the sort that can save a relatively small
| group of devs major pain and/or time? There's good money in
| that for a small business. That the market is too small to be
| attractive to large companies is just gravy.
| sanxiyn wrote:
| Time-travel seems miraculous to me, but uptake seems very
| slow to me.
|
| I hope https://www.replay.io/ succeeds.
| Veserv wrote:
| Commercially available time travel debugging is over 20
| years old at this point [1]. So yeah, the uptake is pretty
| slow.
|
| [1] http://jakob.engbloms.se/archives/1564
| 36870059 wrote:
| ASML's crown jewels are not mere "tools", they are _machines_.
| It is bleeding edge _technology_ and entirely irrelevant to a
| general discussion of economics of 'tool makers'.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Ge2RcvDlgw
| ggm wrote:
| and GDB isn't a machine?
| 36870059 wrote:
| Anyone can make a GDB. Haven't you noticed? _Superpowers_
| are fighting over ASML..
| m463 wrote:
| I think there are a few things at work.
|
| There is no money in tools because employers (and to some extent
| employees) don't value them. Also, folks who make tools maybe
| value them too much? And maybe tools are too easy to copy?
|
| I remember decades ago when purify came out. I tried the demo at
| work on a project I was working on. Within a few hours, I found
| an enormous number memory errors. It was enormously helpful.
| Purify had a high per-seat license cost, and work wouldn't buy
| it.
|
| Many current employers are a little smarter about things, but I
| mainly see things like code coverage tools and version control
| systems, but no real spending on more personal/fashionable tools,
| even if employees are more efficient.
|
| I think tools that might work better would be those employees
| bought them themselves - think jetbrains - and priced
| accordingly. The analogy might be auto mechanics building up
| their collection from snap-on.
|
| also, warts and all, linux is a nice environment because you can
| get to the bottom of most things and tools might be less
| industrial quality, but there are plenty of them.
| neilv wrote:
| Purify was glorious. As was Saber-C before it.
|
| My employer paid for both. But we sold even more expensive
| development software ourselves, and bought very expensive
| workstation and server hardware to run it on, so we were
| accustomed to the price points.
|
| I like that great software is now open source, and most any kid
| or adult around the world can run it on a cheap decade-old PC.
| But I do miss some things about that software development era.
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