
Mu: A Human Scale Computer - minxomat
https://github.com/akkartik/mu#readme
======
ktpsns
This (HN news/Github project) title is awkward. Apparently, it's all about a
new Operating System. However, I don't read much about kernels or shells but
instead about assembler and particular features (?) such as "Track side
effects in assembly language".

Somehow the project lacks a short README or Abstract or list of goals. It's
hard to get an overview without spending much time studying.

~~~
akkartik
Author here. Thanks for the feedback! I seem to have conveyed exactly the
wrong impression. Mu is at the moment not an OS but a userland, with some tiny
fraction of libc redesigned so that programs tend to be easier to test.

The eventual goal is a complete stack with its own OS, but Mu currently
actually relies on a third-party OS kernel. You can package it up with either
Linux or Soso ([https://github.com/ozkl/soso](https://github.com/ozkl/soso))

Does this help? Let me think about how to make the prose clearer..

~~~
minxomat
Hey thanks for chiming in. I discovered this on someone's tilde blog. If you
can think of a more descriptive title, let me know and I'll update it.

~~~
akkartik
Thanks for the submission! I think I have bigger problems than the title ^_^
According to HN policy there's really not much you could do besides use the
title I have.

Could you point me at the tilde blog where you saw it? I'm on the tildeverse
as well
([https://lists.tildeverse.org/hyperkitty/list/tildeclub@lists...](https://lists.tildeverse.org/hyperkitty/list/tildeclub@lists.tildeverse.org/message/Z7EBQ2ZCBIQ7YMA7Q3RUJWWB4LBIFS3M))

~~~
dang
HN policy asks to rewrite misleading titles. Perhaps this one is misleading,
to judge by the comments about it? In which case we can change it to something
more accurate. We also often take an author's preferred HN title as long as it
isn't baity.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

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bsznjyewgd
What happened to the previous Mu that was a funny looking procedural language
and why did you decide to switch directions?

~~~
akkartik
It was a tree-walking interpreter and slow. I had to switch it to a form that
could be compiled. This took me down a year-long road of learning about
machine code.

I would argue that the spirit of Mu has remained constant. Where it needs to
change it does so without trying to stay 'compatible' with the past. It tries
to present as little change atop the substrate as possible to be habitable
([http://akkartik.name/post/habitability](http://akkartik.name/post/habitability))

The old version is available at
[https://github.com/akkartik/mu1](https://github.com/akkartik/mu1). I'll
continue to support it.

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jaquers
[http://akkartik.name/about](http://akkartik.name/about) provides more info
about the submission.

About half way down, "... I've been exploring some promising mechanisms in my
current project, an idealized assembly language and OS for teaching
programming called Mu"

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john-tells-all
Unrelated to Mu, the Simple Python Code Editor, which has been around since
2017 [https://codewith.mu/](https://codewith.mu/)

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captainnmo
What's the aim ?

~~~
badrabbit
> The hypothesis of Mu and SubX is that designing the entire system to be
> testable from day 1 and from the ground up would radically impact the
> culture of the eco-system in a way that no bolted-on tool or service at
> higher levels can replicate...

Maybe that's the aim.

