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The Thirty Million Line Problem

Molly Rocket

148K subscribers • 32 videos on Hallway

YouTube
  • Recommended by 13 people: 11 on Hacker News, 1 on Lobsters and 1 in engineering communities.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2018 to 2024.
  • Presented by Casey Muratori, founder of Molly Rocket
  • An opinion. It argues one side of a question engineers disagree on.

Intermediate. Assumes working knowledge.

326K views8 years ago13 recommendations

Systems programmingSoftware designSoftware architecturePerformance and optimizationSimplicity and complexity

Casey Muratori argues that modern software complexity and bloat are unnecessary byproducts of hardware and operating system diversity.

A historical argument for creating a stable instruction set architecture (ISA) for entire system-on-a-chip (SoC) packages. Please note that although it's never mentioned in the audio there was a typo in the slide deck that makes the situation even more ludicrous when comparing 1990's machine to 2015's: the hard drive line erroneously said "gig" for the 1990's machine. It should have said "mb". The specs were the A3000, which never had any hard drives even close to 1 gig, let alone 50 gigs!

Why it's here

13 people recommend this

What people say. Highly recommended as a thought-provoking critique of modern software bloat and the benefits of stable hardware interfaces.

jmon Lobsters • Recommends

The Thirty Million Line Problem
13View on Lobsters

ropeadopepopeon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Docker is a dangerous gamble”

This may be a little off topic, but has anybody watched Casey Muratori's proposal on SoC ISAs0? The video is long, but it's worth watching all of it. It sounds to me like a SoC ISA could make docker obsolete. If it ever happens, anyway. 0: link to this video
View on Hacker News

henningon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Show HN: One – A new React framework unifying web, native and local-first”

Yes, modern computer systems are unbelievably complicated from the application level down to the hardware. The consequences are absolutely devastating. link to this video
View on Hacker News

u/superjoe30in r/Zig • Recommends

The Thirty Million Line Problem
3View on Reddit

meukon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Systems Software Research is Irrelevant (2000) [pdf]”

…ies in the specs (or deviations from the spec that are so common that they are expected nowadays). The case is even worse when your OS is supposed to run on different hardware. I think this is the main reason that Apple, in general, has a much better UX: They only have to support a limited set of hardware. Casey Murati has a great rant about this: link to this video…
View on Hacker News

worldsayshion Hacker News • Recommends

On “Docker is vulnerable to a symlink-race attack”

If you'd like to venture further into this rabbit hole I can recommend "Preventing the Collapse of Civilization": link And "The Thirty Million Line Problem": link to this video
View on Hacker News

dsegoon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Software Is Hard (2007)”

Have you seen the 30 million line problem* by Casey Muratori (of Handmade Hero fame)? There is an argument that a lot of today's complexity in software is an (unnecessary) byproduct of changes in hardware design. * link to this video
View on Hacker News

scrupleon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Anti-patterns and malpractices in modern software development (2015)”

There is a related Jonathan Blow talk titled "Preventing the Collapse of Civilization" 0 that I came across recently from a HN post. You might be interested in watching it. Also, Casey Muratori's talk titled "The Thirty Million Line Problem" 1. 0: link 1: link to this video
View on Hacker News

stephc_int13on Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: Is there still a place for native desktop apps?”

A quite well-known rant from Casey Muratori about a very similar issue: link to this video (For those who never saw it)
View on Hacker News

JamesSwifton Hacker News • Recommends

On “Tetris-OS: An operating system that only plays Tetris”

That might be what OS'es currently _are_, but I disagree that it is what an OS _is_. I think fundamentally an OS is as the OP uses it, a set of code that interfaces with all your hardware to make the computer function. Heres a good talk I came across in a HN comment a little while back 1 about how games used to be developed vs how they are today. 1 - link to this video
View on Hacker News

posneton Hacker News • Recommends

On “DevOps is a failure”

You are not alone in thinking that, see 'The Thirty Million Line' talk by Casey Muratori. (Long, but worth it, assuming you haven't seen it already) link to this video
View on Hacker News

drivers99on Hacker News • Recommends

On “I wanted a beautiful computer and couldn't find one, so I made my own”

I would say just look around, but it's probably because of some of the information I've seen that opened my eyes to it, so I'll point you to these two talks: link to this video Preventing the Collapse of Civilization / Jonathan Blow link The Thirty Million Line Problem / Casey Muratori
View on Hacker News

frflon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: Article on software only increasing complexity?”

It's not what OP is looking for, but there's a relevant video I know of by a well known game-dev, The Thirty Million Line Problem - link to this video
View on Hacker News

u/MisterEmbeddedin r/C_Programming • Mentions

On “Why linux c binaries cannot run on windows?”

I'll watch it, dropping the link here: [video
4View on Reddit

loup-vaillanton Hacker News • Mentions

On “Zapcc – A caching C++ compiler based on clang”

…should be able to code correct programs. We should have environments stable enough to preserve that correctness. And we should stop believing we need so much code in the first place. Let's not kid ourselves, programs "require maintenance" (euphemism for "aren't finished"), mainly because they're so damn big. We can do better, really. link link link to this video…
View on Hacker News

AnIdiotOnTheNeton Hacker News • Mentions

On “Walk Monster (2012)”

I feel like you intended to link this 0? 0 The 30 Million Line Problem: link to this video The article is about Casey's work verifying collision geometry and movement code in Jonathan Blow's The Witness, to ensure that the player can't get stuck anywhere or fall through the ground or anything like that.
View on Hacker News