This is the same thing - it's exciting. It's trying to do things many of us have thought of, but never worked on. It's new technology. It's something that, in our hearts, we want to succeed just because the alternatives are all grungy and dusty and carry the compatibility fixes of generations.
Of course, if you don't really care about OS technology, or look at it from a consumer perspective, yeah, it's not giving you anything.
But for engineers who care about OSs? This is amazing and invigorating.
I found it interesting to browse some of the source code to get an idea of the roles that different language runtimes seem to play. But much more than that I would be interested in the driver model, the graphics stack, the IPC facilities and how it all differs from Linux/Android.
Are you an expert in C? or in C++?
Okay, so neither.
Please consider reading these links. [1] [2]
After all, it is developed with very similar tools compared to every other rocket in existence.
However, it is true that many high profile failures in aerospace have been due to software errors, so I would say that software tooling is certainly one area that they could also benefit from.
Languages like Rust and Haskell are an attempt to put such best practice into the language tooling.
Best practice often varies between projects and changes rather often, ..say.. in a matter of a few years. Most of what Haskell and Rust offer are a library away (yes, even compile time checks) for C++, but not vice versa. There is a reason new languages with baked in 'opinion' come and go.
You can not stop the users from shooting themselves in the foot, but that is not the goal here. We want to enable 'safe and secure' programming, not develop toy idiot-proof write-only languages that are useless for large projects.
It should be the goal. Even experts make mistakes. This is why static type systems exist. The logical thing to do is to strengthen the type system to prevent more classes of errors.
If the user avoids the analogous features in C++ and stick to modern conventions, it is not less safe/secure.
Windows Phone was originally supposed to eschew apps for some sort of focus on views, I forget what they called it. Now Windows 10 Mobile is more or less just Windows 10, with apps. I won't mind if someone finally finds a new model and makes it not suck, but when you're early in the product design phase is when you try crazy ideas to see if they pan out, the final product ends up looking more normal.
Windows Phone 8.1 was the beginning of the end for hubs, with the OS feeling much more like iOS/Android, with winmo 10 basically killing it altogether.
Curiously much of the hub functionality seems to be coming back to Windows proper. For example, see ‘People’ integration in the taskbar that shipped with Windows 10.
1. This is an open development effort, that's interesting.
2. It's moving very quick.
3. the code is really interesting.
How is the code interesting?
What features of this OS differentiate it from others?
1. Your login is tied to your google account. Want to use the computer in any real capacity? Google account.
2. They think bringing back multi tasking from the 90s is important.
3. People will want to control their computer views.
4. They are making a new kernel.
5. They believe in the capabilities based security model.
6. They believe in micro kernels.
7. They don't have any NEW ideas yet (otherwise we would see them in early stages). Maybe they will come up with something, it's research right?
I don't think they're trying to push Linux anywhere.
Maybe they're trying to win over users from Linux, giving them some power in the software market & free contributions.
Maybe it's a subtle signal of their plans/capabilities towards competitors/dart devs?