Brokenthorn demo series...

[Kamal123]

What happened to brokenthorn series?? Is there any new website for project Neptune or evolution engine? Is there any new website available for new demos of brokenthorn series...?

[Love4Boobies]

There is a project page that can be found on the original Web site but it seems unmaintained for the past 10+ years. It's no surprise. Most people move on to more interesting projects sooner or later and it's probably the case with the author as well.

OS dev is only worth the investment if there's something to be gained from it. There's a point of diminishing returns, though, where you aren't learning anything new or contributing anything of practical interest.

[PeterX]

What happened to brokenthorn series?? Is there any new website for project Neptune or evolution engine? Is there any new website available for new demos of brokenthorn series...?

Why not try this:
http://www.brokenthorn.com/
There is still a OS dev series.
And the site says that project Neptune is closed source now.

Greetings
Peter

[Love4Boobies]

Looking at it, it seems like a rather lousy resource. Generally speaking, you should probably stay away from tutorials. They're often written by overenthusiastic but inexperienced people, they're limited in both size and scope, they only present a very small part of the picture, they often have all sorts of subtle errors (I even saw a couple in the two minutes I skimmed it just now), and, worse of all, the audience is left thinking they've learnt much more than they actually have.

[Kamal123]

Looking at it, it seems like a rather lousy resource. Generally speaking, you should probably stay away from tutorials. They're often written by overenthusiastic but inexperienced people, they're limited in both size and scope, they only present a very small part of the picture, they often have all sorts of subtle errors (I even saw a couple in the two minutes I skimmed it just now), and, worse of all, the audience is left thinking they've learnt much more than they actually have.

Yes it is true...I m suffering from this type of error...

[PeterX]

Looking at it, it seems like a rather lousy resource. Generally speaking, you should probably stay away from tutorials. They're often written by overenthusiastic but inexperienced people, they're limited in both size and scope, they only present a very small part of the picture, they often have all sorts of subtle errors (I even saw a couple in the two minutes I skimmed it just now), and, worse of all, the audience is left thinking they've learnt much more than they actually have.

Sounds right! Unfortunately
I think that probably applies to all OS dev tuorials because OS dev needs a different kind of thinking than for example implementing bubble sort or writing an editor. A good OS dev tutorial IMHO should not present ready solutions.

Or can you recommend a certain OS dev tutorial?

EDIT: I think one main difference is, that nobody needs or wants to write an identical OS like existing ones. But "Bubblesort" and an editor can and perhaps should be implemented in one right way and not else-way. So OS devers can't or shouldn't follow anyone byte by byte.

Happy hacking
Peter

[Love4Boobies]

No, I don't think tutorials are good for anything involving proper education. They exist for when you don't care how something works or whether it could be improved; you just need a quick solution. For instance, I might use one if I have to do up my tie. I don't really wear them much so I always forget how to do that and I don't really care how they work.

If you have to watch a tutorial to learn how to write an editor, then you don't yet know the first thing about programming (which is fine) and are taking a step in a direction that is guaranteed to lead you nowhere (which is not fine). If all you do is copy other people's solutions, perhaps changing them slightly in the process, you're not solving problems (heck, there's a tutorial on them already) and you're not self-reliant because you'll get stuck as soon as you have to do anything for which a tutorial isn't available. In other words, you're bringing zero value to the world. No good.

OS development, by the way, does not require any sort of special thinking, as you say. It's just regular software engineering. If you've only ever worked on toy projects before, operating systems might seem special in some way but it's actually toy projects that are special because they don't require much engineering at all; they're so small, people can usually just wing them. As software grows larger, it starts requiring research, planning, managing complexity.

[neon]

Hi,

I suppose am a bit late to this one but here goes: the legacy tutorials were paused. There has been a number of questionable decisions made throughout the original tutorials in an attempt to make it easier which ended up making it more complicated in the end; farther, the tutorials became increasingly hard to maintain -- a bugfix would need to be replicated in all demo's across all tutorials.

But we will announce that we are planning on releasing a new set of more advanced and modern tutorials that will take a different approach and perspective & can in theory allow us more freedom in what is covered. There are a lot of things I would like to go into detail with that is simply not possible with the legacy tutorials -- however we might be able to do so this time around. This would also introduce a feedback loop to provide more input in the thoroughness and correctness of the content and the demo source code. The current plan for the new tutorials is to put more emphasis on OS architecture and design and will use--most probably since it is where we host internal code at--BitBucket. The current ideas should provide enough extendability that we can pick and choose what components are needed for select demos rather then just "building off the previous demo." To facilitate compatibility and debugging capabilities, we are currently working on a few tools (that is also for Neptune) that should allow the system to be compatible with any tool chain & source level debugging facilities with nmake and nbuild.

In summary, we have taken the input we have received over the past few years and want to do this one right -- but this time, perfect. We are taking this very carefully at the start so when things are ready we can start releasing the new advanced series.

I did want to reiterate what was posted above though which is also applicable with the possible new series -- one of the primary goals, even with the original, is for developers to become more independent. Fact is, past a certain point, you will run into a scenario which all you have is some shabby documentation about something and absolutely nothing else to work with. Even with some official documentation that won't provide everything, the point is tutorials aren't always available. This is why we always discouraged copying and pasting -- we provide demo code since it provides a proof of concept of a working solution. However, it is often times tailored to the tutorial and not meant for a general ("must be done this way") solution. Although the potential new series, we will be more careful on this and do still think providing working demo's are very useful, we have to always encourage experimentation and trying things out yourself--its how we achieve independence.

As for Neptune...the project is still ongoing. We are working on a completely new tool chain--which has taken a lot longer then expected--but it has always been a goal for the system to be completely independent. We have been pushing it off but ever since UEFI and graphics were added to nboot awhile back we decided to focus on achieving this goal now so we can port the whole system to it. Because of the wide-scale of this effort, we don't see the benefit of providing access at this time since a lot can change.