In his '90 Usenix presentation, Dennis Ritchie reminded the audience that
Steve Jobs stood at the same podium a few years back and announced that
X-windows was brain-dead and would soon die. "He was half-right.
Sometimes when you fill a vacuum, it still sucks."<p>-- Dennis Ritchie, coinventor of UNIX, from an article in UNIX Today<p><a href="http://www.anvari.org/fortune/Miscellaneous_Collections/133229_in-his-90-usenix-presentation-dennis-ritchie-reminded-the-audience-that-steve-jobs-stood-at-the-same-podium-a-few-years-back-and-announced-that-x-windows-was-brain-dead-and-would-soon-die.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.anvari.org/fortune/Miscellaneous_Collections/1332...</a>
I haven't really gone through X11 before, but the API really is terrible. How have we managed to hang onto this monstrosity for so long? I get people have a fondness for something that has held up for so long, but the huge complexity and difficulty of hardware acceleration means it's time to throw it out.<p><a href="http://magcius.github.io/xplain/article/x-basics.html" rel="nofollow">http://magcius.github.io/xplain/article/x-basics.html</a><p>Head over there and drag the kitten around to see why. Now your average Linux desktop builds a lot on X11 to get it to perform how it does now, but all this effort is a huge waste. Just compare it to something like Apple's UIKit or Android's layouts - it's well past the sell by date.
The more important question of whether or not systems like C++ and X-Windows cause actual permanent brain damage in humans, will have to wait for the autopsies of human brain doners. That won't be soon, since they're still only in the animal experimentation stages. But I think it's reprehensible how they're exposing all those poor innocent bunnies to shoddy static class libraries without garbage collection, and high doses of raw Motif.<p><a href="http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~chak/quotations.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~chak/quotations.html</a>
Great read, especially enjoyed learning about why IE6 did that thing it did[0].<p>I'm not sure why I enjoy reading things like this. I have no intention of getting into X development or graphics programming for that matter but it was fun read nonetheless.<p>[0] <a href="http://www.mrdoob.com/lab/javascript/effects/ie6/" rel="nofollow">http://www.mrdoob.com/lab/javascript/effects/ie6/</a>
Nicely done.
I love it that you have a server running in JS. Very nice.
Very much looking forward to the next installment.<p>...I've always been a bit of an X11 fanboy, so thanks for this.
Pardon the honesty, but this too academic, and not tasked based, for a 'rest of us' style.<p>Further reading: OK, this is an X developer's guide. You should call it that. It will help developers find it and stop the average Joe who wants to run a remote app on his local display from trying to use the wrong guide.