
Ask HN: If one person was to redesign all fundamental software in a lifetime - Lichtso
If one person was to redesign all fundamental software in a lifetime<p>Consider the following thought experiment &#x2F; scenario:
Tomorrow morning, on your favorite tech news site,
you read that a single person developed a system which covers all of these needs:<p><pre><code>  * Protocols &#x2F; Formats
  * Programming Concept &#x2F; Language
  * Compiler &#x2F; Interpreter
  * Virtual Machine &#x2F; Run Time Environment
  * Data Base &#x2F; File System
  * Version Control &#x2F; Package Manager
  * Networking Stack &#x2F; UI Framework
  * Operating System &#x2F; Resource Management
</code></pre>
Excluding the following &quot;incidentals&quot;:<p><pre><code>  * Hardware Abstraction &#x2F; Specific Drivers
  * Standard Library (because it is to vague and also redundant)
  * End User Applications like Browser, Mail-Client, etc.
</code></pre>
I am not talking about combining existing components into yet another distribution, but rethinking them from ground up.
The question is not how feasible this is technically nor how it would be received and integrated into the existing world.
It is just about the system on its own, standalone, like a piece of art.
Also, I am interested in the implications of Conway&#x27;s law:
The idea that software projects will always reflect the social and communication structure of the organization and people who built it.<p>Let your imagination run wild...
What do you think it would be, look and feel like to you?
Do you think:<p><pre><code>  A) It will suffer from a lack of mental diversity (like a monoculture) and be a security nightmare because nobody else reviewed it while it was designed (many eyes theory)?
  B) The fact that a single person managed to pull it off in a lifetime proofs its superior simplicity and instead of the usual patchwork we would finally get one unified and well engineered solution?
  C) It is phony &#x2F; bogus because such a thing is just impossible to do.
  D) Something entirely different</code></pre>
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wmf
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