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John Carmack's arguments against building a custom XR OS at Meta

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520 points OlympicMarmoto | 2 comments | 29 Aug 25 16:45 UTC | HN request time: 0.416s | source
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Aurornis ◴[29 Aug 25 21:23 UTC] No.45069549[source]▶
> They also got me reported to HR by the manager of the XROS effort for supposedly making his team members feel bad

I've only seen John Carmack's public interactions, but they've all been professional and kind.

It's depressing to imagine HR getting involved because someone's feelings had been hurt by an objective discussion from a person like John Carmack.

I'm having flashbacks to the times in my career when coworkers tried to weaponize HR to push their agenda. Every effort was eventually dismissed by HR, but there is a chilling effect on everyone when you realize that someone at the company is trying to put your job at stake because they didn't like something you said. The next time around, the people targeted are much more hesitant to speak up.

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dagmx ◴[29 Aug 25 22:42 UTC] No.45070238[source]▶
John can be quite blunt and harsh in person, from everyone I know who’s interacted with him.

If he doesn’t believe in something, he can sometimes be over critical and it’s hard to push back in that kind of power imbalance.

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WD-42 ◴[29 Aug 25 22:49 UTC] No.45070285[source]▶
Which makes sense when you are one of 3 developers at ID software. There's absolutely no room for waste.

This is Meta. Let the kids build their operating system ffs. Is he now more concerned with protecting shareholder value? Who cares.

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1. Aeolun ◴[30 Aug 25 01:53 UTC] No.45071263[source]▶
No, no. If you want your VR apps running in two years on something that looks like an OS, just build an app that runs on an existing one.

If you want to be the dominant player in the market in 10-15 years, build the OS and keep funding it.

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2. 01HNNWZ0MV43FF ◴[30 Aug 25 20:56 UTC] No.45077940[source]▶
I just can't believe that an OS needs to be forked off for such a workload

iPhones and Macs share a kernel and a large portion of user space and syscalls, right?

If the GPL is a problem just fork some BSD like the PS3 did, and pretend you're maintaining code that you already spent five years on

I know you need low latency for XR + VR + AR - everyone needs low latency for everything. So they could build on whatever has been done for audio and networking and Android touch screens that all want low latency too

I'm speaking foolishly from outside but making "an OS for" something is more commonly marketing speak than a good idea. Like this fucking "OS for cities" and "OS for work" stuff. That's an OS the way a cookie recipe is an OS for a fucking oven. The casual insistence on misunderstanding important things really gets my goats