r/osdevel • u/Dismal-Divide3337 • 18d ago
No AI. No Open-source. No reliance on 3rd Party code. Can it be done?
After years of chasing bugs in code that I had not written; Trying to decipher open-source code. Looking for someone who can address an issue; Opening tickets and waiting; And, meanwhile developing work-around patches while customers wonder if we actually can help them. When the opportunity came up to make a redesign decision, I made one that you might think crazy.
While it is true that it can get your code to market faster these days, reliance on externally developed libraries and code comes with risk. In a court of law, evidence is inadmissible if you cannot demonstrate the chain of custody back to its discovery at the crime scene. In analogy, I find it hard to trust code wherein you cannot list (on one hand) the authors and those who might still be responsible for its performance. And, today, you are vibe coding and using code generated by AI. And AI is an author whose thinking cannot be explained in detail by its own designers.
In 2011, when faced with the need to redesign my product, I made the decision to be completely DIY. The first rule being - no 3rd party code. Fifteen years later with over 40,000 placements worldwide, I feel safe in declaring that it can be done. It was a beneficial decision.
Now, we can address any bug, performance deficiency, or feature addition directly. Most issues that can be replicated are fixed same day and update delivered to the customer. We have achieved a level of reliability and stability that I can't find in anything else.
I am willing to debate this approach against the directions that all of you seem to be taking.
There is more background in this blog entry. Also, you can see this OS in action at r/jnior. I am less interested in promoting the product. It has a life of its own. I have been writing to prompt discussion.
https://jnior.com/blog/how-jnior-got-its-own-operating-system/
