Nate Cull (.social)Jun 2, 2022

The Progress of Software Engineering, 1989-2022

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Distributed_Objects

<< Portable Distributed Objects (PDO) is an application programming interface (API) for creating object-oriented code that can be executed remotely on a network of computers.. created by NeXT Computer, Inc. using their OpenStep system >>

<< The ability to instantiate any object known to the local process from any other process is a known security vulnerability, and Apple strongly discourages use of PDO for that reason. >>

Portable Distributed Objects - Wikipedia

Show threadNate Cull (.social)Jun 2, 2022
The ability to instantiate any Concept known to a human mind inside any other human mind by means of Speech is a known security vulnerability, and the United Network Command Office for Operational Logistics strongly discourages use of Speech for that reason.
Show threadNate Cull (.social)Jun 2, 2022

The thing that annoys me about the failure of distributed objects as a programming paradigm is that,

in the 1990s, you could not go anywhere in computing without being utterly hammered by the message that Objects and especially Distributed Objects were The Future Here Now, this was it, Programming was Solved Forever, if you didn't Get It you were just Wrong

and we just sorta slid from there into "actually distributed objects are terrible never use them"

but never acknowledging that change.

Show threadNate Cull (.social)Jun 2, 2022

It's not just the 1990s Distributed Objects people being so loud and aggressive and moneyed-up and preachy

It's not just that their tech was terrible and dangerous and caused billions in security damage

It's not just that the industry changed its mind about something it was so passionately furious scorched-earth in favour of

*It's the never admitting any fault* that gets me.

The computing industry often acts like an abusive gaslighting bully, and that behaviour is still going on today.

Show threadVirtue signal 💉💉💉🇺🇸 🇺🇦Jun 2, 2022

@natecull Maybe distributed objects solidified into hardware and became Internet of Things.

BTW, never use them if you can help it.

Show threadNate Cull (.social)

@tasket

Components kinda got replaced with Containers, I feel.

These days it's "make the whole app and all its support libraries - possibly even all its support *servers*, including entire Clouds and CDNs - the modular unit"

Jun 2, 2022 at 3:14amWeb
Show threadkeithzgJun 2, 2022
@natecull @tasket A friend noted to me the other day

> "I'm learning to write Dockerfiles and it's fun to take 10 minutes to build the image, shell into it, see if a command will work, kill the image, update the docker file, start again"

Computers are going great folks!