The RISC Deprogrammer
Strongly opinionated with a real message, I loved it.<p>Through the RISC story we pay a cultural debt we owe to RISC. It is story telling, about a time long gone, and the tale is mythical in nature. In opposition to the myth, as the article states, RISC by itself is no longer an ideal worth pursuing.<p>This is relevant to the other Big Myth of our tech times, the Unix Story, and by extension to Linux. UNIX is mythical, having birthed OS and file abstractions, as well as C. It was a big idea event. But its design is antithetical to what a common user today needs, owning many devices and installing software that can&#x27;t be trusted, at all, yet needs to be cooperative.<p>When Unix was born, many users had to share the same machine, and resources were scarce to the point there was an urgent need to share them, between users. Unix created the system administrator concept and glorified him. But today Unix botches the ideals it was once born of, the ideals of software modularity and reusability. Package managers are a thing, yet people seem blind to the fact they actually bubble up from hell. Many PM&#x27;s have come already and none will ever cure the disease.<p>Despite this the younger generations see Unix through rosy glasses, as the pinnacle of software design, kinda like a Statue of Liberty, instead of the destruction of creative forces it actually results in. I posit Linux&#x27;s contribution to the world is actually negative now. We don&#x27;t articulate the challenges ahead, we&#x27;re just procrastinating on Linux. It&#x27;s the only game in town. But the money is still flowing, servers are still a thing, and so the myth is still alive.<p>The Unix Myth has become a toxic lie, and as collateral Linus has become a playmate for the tech titans. I&#x27;m waiting for him to come out and do the right thing, for it is evil for the Myth to continue to govern today&#x27;s reality.