[bestorworse]

I see it as better way of developing a product. Or actually, a foundational system, if Fuchsia really ends up becoming something like that. You see, lots of things that today are fundamental were just "developed organically", and that is OK because people never tought that it would end up being what it is.

Besides, a greater part of the cruft we have today is rooted in the development model companies adopt that is "develop it, make it work, and ship so not to delay the schedule/budget so much". And that is OK too given that companies just want to develop a product and don't have lots of time, budget and resources... But, as things are in software engineering, that model doesn't produce as good a piece of software as it would with more iterations and refactoring seeking the best software model and implementation. In the end, that results in greater issues issues than what was really needed and the backward compatibility hinders an actual solution. But Fuchsia being meant as a foundation, cannot be developed like that. Like a product that "just works". It would end up being just another bad designed (and chances are, bad implemented too) system based on concepts of the beginnings of computer industry that doesn't necessarily apply for today's systems.

As I've loosely accompanied Fuchsia's development, they've done a lot of early bring up work just so that other parts of the system could be developed. And that is expected because they developed arguably almost everything from scratch. You cant expect ending up with really great system design and implementation just from these first iterations. Then, with the experiences from that, they've done lots of refactorings that refined system's abstractions, APIs and implementation. And, if they are serious about Fuchsia being a good foundational system, they have to solve these left over from the early development.

[wmf]

Sure, but if Fuchsia is 100% grunt work and there's nothing cool to do in the project it's not going to attract outside contributors.

[bestorworse]

That is true.

I think this is the greater challenge now for Google. A system being very well designed and implemented only attracts enthusiasts and people like that with free time. Even the 'better security' aspect doesn't convince the majority of developers. For general usage in IoT and primarily in smartphone/tablet devices, Google would have to:

1. Port ART together with all of Android's public facing APIs to Fuchsia. Evidence says they are doing it, at least for Android ART. As people say, "there's no way without Android app compatibility"...

2. Convince OEMs to switch to Fuchsia platform instead of Linux. That I believe is under way with project Treble, or at least has a path for a possible solution. And Fuchsia's architecture solving Linux big pain points would be a strong argument in convincing OEMs to switch. Woundn't be easy though as drivers would have to be (re)developed or some bridge would have to be built.

With above done, developers would have a push to develop targeting Fuchsia natively. Then Fuchsia's better system architecture together with security advantages would be more strongly perceived by end developers.

If Google managed to develop some new fancy end product on top of Fuchsia that got traction, then that process would be a lot easier for them...

[lowdose]

The classical chicken and egg problem every platform has but in this case even more obvious because there are no consumers yet so the number of producers is also small.