On: How Big Technical Changes Happen at Slack

[musicale]

> Microkernels; EPIC architectures like IA-64; object request brokers; and 1990s’-style neural nets are gone, and will not return.

I am not entirely convinced that they are gone:

- Xen is essentially a modern microkernel. The most popular "microkernel" from the 1980s, Mach/BSD, evolved into Xnu/Darwin which powers macOS and iOS. L4 and other microkernels still exist.

- VLIW lives on inside GPUs as well as x86-compatible CPUs

- ORBs turned into microservices

- Neural Nets turned into Deep Learning

[mxschumacher → musicale]

I find the negative sentiment regarding microkernels premature as well. There are some really interesting projects underway:

https://mirage.io/ https://www.redox-os.org/

Don't microkernels have a real shot at replacing containers? Maybe we can stop running the huge linux kernel for every microservice?

[koffiezet → mxschumacher]

> Maybe we can stop running the huge linux kernel for every microservice?

Ehm that's exactly how containers DON'T work. They share the kernel... (and only the kernel)