On: Super-star programmers

[schrijver]

The only example here given of the powers of these superprogrammers, is that they have banded together to make an OS that’s technically impressive, but gets no traction in the marketplace and ends up all but forgotten (PC/GEOS)? Not very enticing…

[pacaro → schrijver]

Having written both application and system code for PC/GEOS, it never appeared to have been written by 10Xers.

For the record I've worked with EPOC-32, Windows, NextStep, Linux, VxWorks, and Nucleus - none of them was as painful as PC/GEOS (although EPOC-32 sometimes came close...)

[vadman → schrijver]

The article had the bit about Microsoft shutting them out of the market.

In any case, superprogrammers != super marketplace conquerors, and IMO should not be judged as (un)impressive on that metric.

[droithomme → schrijver]

Have you written a lot of operating systems yourself then?