Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code

From	ec429 <ec429@cam.ac.uk>
Newsgroups	comp.lang.c
Subject	Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code
Date	2012-01-09 19:21 +0000
Organization	A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID	<jefemv$9u1$1@dont-email.me> (permalink)
References	(2 earlier) <portability-20120109140103@ram.dialup.fu-berlin.de> <jeep1a$2qo$1@dont-email.me> <jeeqe8$tof$1@speranza.aioe.org> <0.de456f72e5f943f83dc6.20120109134421GMT.87r4z9at3e.fsf@bsb.me.uk> <jefa2h$6ms$1@speranza.aioe.org>

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On 09/01/12 18:01, jacob navia wrote:
> And then ALL the details: makefiles do not require tabs and will accept
> tabs or spaces...
Meaning that your developer on an Apple system writes non-conforming 
makefiles and can't understand why no-one on other Unices ever seems to 
use his software.
The pitfalls of Postel's prescription, as HTML demonstrated.

> NO NEED FOR -lm!!!!!!! The libraries are included BY DEFAULT!!!!!!!!
Inherently brittle as it won't canonically know about all libraries, 
also I bet it pisses off library developers when it links against the 
old version instead of the new one they've just built.

> Linux people are very conservative, and their version of Unix is frozen
> around 1980. Apple did a better Unix. And I am not speaking about the
> wonderful and intuitive user interface, the great LOOKS, the package
> management system that has hundreths of public domain applications
> ported to Apple Unix, etc etc.
Linux and GNU follow (largely) the POSIX standards.  Standards are a 
_good thing_.  While every improvement is necessarily a change, not 
every change is necessarily an improvement.  When Linux does things the 
1980 way, it's because the 1980 way is the Right Thing (tm).  When the 
1980 way is the Wrong Thing (tm), Linux changes it where compatibility 
permits.  (Interestingly, several of the Right Things turn out to have 
come from Plan 9)
Package management?  .deb; end of.

> I am really satisfied with my Mac, sorry. It is EXACTLY what linux
> could have been if they would have worked in making a BETTER Unix
> instead of producing several dozens of different window management
> systems (equally bad and equally awful) and several dozens of equally
> bad IDEs.
GNU did make a "better Unix".  Have you read The Unix Haters' Handbook? 
  1980s-vintage Unix had some serious issues, most the result of 
vendors' attempts at product differentiation for competitive advantage. 
  Maintaining source-level compatibility with the post-divestiture 
clusterf**k guaranteed that compromises would have to be made.  As older 
software has been replaced with newer, portable code, GNU and Linux have 
evolved to discard as much of that baggage as they dare.
The WMs are not "awful"; neither GNOME nor KDE is perfect, but that's 
largely because they erred in the direction of imitating MacOS Classic.
Xfce, LXDE, fvwm2 and several others are clean, unobtrusive, and 
lightweight.
IDEs are simply not necessary; if nano were mouse-aware I wouldn't even 
use a GUI editor.  Text editor, compiler, make, debugger, shell tools - 
that's all the environment you need, and 'integration' is pointless when 
everything is a stream of text (a powerful abstraction that Macs, with 
their "resource fork", break).

> They never think about the USER EXPERIENCE when designing their programs
> (just look at gdb), something Apple has always had in mind.
Looking at gdb, my impression is that its UX is actually very good. 
It's exactly the right way to build a debugger - its interface is 
essentially a scripting language with a REPL, allowing you to control 
your program and query its state in as natural a way as is possible for 
compiled programs.  Compare, incidentally, the debugging cycles of 
interpreted languages: for instance, the Python debugger is the Python 
interpreter; most JS debuggers are JS interpreters.

Summary: Steve Jobs is not, in fact, god.  He was just a competent marketer.

-e
-- 
'sane', adj.: see 'unimaginative'
   on the web - http://jttlov.no-ip.org

Thread

Writing "absolutely" portable code ArifulHossain tuhin <etothepowerpi@gmail.com> - 2012-01-09 02:26 -0800
  Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code ec429 <ec429@cam.ac.uk> - 2012-01-09 11:47 +0000
    Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code Jens Gustedt <jens.gustedt@loria.fr> - 2012-01-09 13:56 +0100
    Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code ArifulHossain tuhin <etothepowerpi@gmail.com> - 2012-01-09 05:45 -0800
      Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code ec429 <ec429@cam.ac.uk> - 2012-01-09 14:46 +0000
        Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code ArifulHossain tuhin <etothepowerpi@gmail.com> - 2012-01-10 01:11 -0800
    Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2012-01-09 15:58 +0000
    Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code falk@rahul.net (Edward A. Falk) - 2012-01-09 18:41 +0000
  Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2012-01-09 12:23 +0000
    Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code Eric Sosman <esosman@ieee-dot-org.invalid> - 2012-01-09 08:45 -0500
      Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code superpollo <superpollo@tznvy.pbz> - 2012-01-09 15:02 +0100
        Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2012-01-09 16:11 +0000
    Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code ArifulHossain tuhin <etothepowerpi@gmail.com> - 2012-01-09 05:56 -0800
      Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2012-01-09 15:07 +0000
        Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code ArifulHossain tuhin <etothepowerpi@gmail.com> - 2012-01-10 01:21 -0800
          Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code Stephen Sprunk <stephen@sprunk.org> - 2012-01-10 13:20 -0600
            Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code ArifulHossain tuhin <etothepowerpi@gmail.com> - 2012-01-11 06:57 -0800
          Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2012-01-11 09:23 +0000
  Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code jacob navia <jacob@spamsink.net> - 2012-01-09 13:48 +0100
    Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code ec429 <ec429@cam.ac.uk> - 2012-01-09 13:11 +0000
      Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code Nick Keighley <nick_keighley_nospam@hotmail.com> - 2012-01-09 05:27 -0800
        Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code ec429 <ec429@cam.ac.uk> - 2012-01-09 13:41 +0000
          Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code ArifulHossain tuhin <etothepowerpi@gmail.com> - 2012-01-09 06:09 -0800
      Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code jacob navia <jacob@spamsink.net> - 2012-01-09 14:35 +0100
        Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2012-01-09 13:44 +0000
          Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code ArifulHossain tuhin <etothepowerpi@gmail.com> - 2012-01-09 06:18 -0800
          Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code jacob navia <jacob@spamsink.net> - 2012-01-09 18:59 +0100
          Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code jacob navia <jacob@spamsink.net> - 2012-01-09 19:01 +0100
            Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code ec429 <ec429@cam.ac.uk> - 2012-01-09 19:21 +0000
              Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code Richard <rgrdev_@gmail.com> - 2012-01-10 20:48 +0100
                Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code David Dyer-Bennet <dd-b@dd-b.net> - 2012-01-10 14:26 -0600
                Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code Richard <rgrdev_@gmail.com> - 2012-01-10 21:44 +0100
                Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code David Dyer-Bennet <dd-b@dd-b.net> - 2012-01-10 15:45 -0600
                Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2012-01-11 09:12 +0000
                Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code ec429 <ec429@cam.ac.uk> - 2012-01-11 11:10 +0000
                Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2012-01-11 11:52 -0500
                Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code ec429 <ec429@cam.ac.uk> - 2012-01-11 17:01 +0000
                Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code James Kuyper <jameskuyper@verizon.net> - 2012-01-11 12:11 -0500
              Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2012-01-11 09:08 +0000
            Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2012-01-11 08:22 +0000
            Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2012-01-11 08:54 +0000
        Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code ec429 <ec429@cam.ac.uk> - 2012-01-09 13:57 +0000
          Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code Seebs <usenet-nospam@seebs.net> - 2012-01-09 19:21 +0000
            Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code ec429 <ec429@cam.ac.uk> - 2012-01-09 19:52 +0000
              Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code Seebs <usenet-nospam@seebs.net> - 2012-01-09 20:20 +0000
        Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code ArifulHossain tuhin <etothepowerpi@gmail.com> - 2012-01-09 06:16 -0800
    Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code ArifulHossain tuhin <etothepowerpi@gmail.com> - 2012-01-09 06:02 -0800
  Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> - 2012-01-09 14:50 -0800
    Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2012-01-09 23:20 +0000
      Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2012-01-10 00:23 +0000
    Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code Dirk Zabel <zabel@riccius-sohn.eu> - 2012-01-10 17:44 +0100
      Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code ArifulHossain tuhin <etothepowerpi@gmail.com> - 2012-01-11 07:13 -0800
      Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code Nick Bowler <nbowler@draconx.ca> - 2012-01-17 20:36 +0000
        Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code ec429 <ec429@cam.ac.uk> - 2012-01-17 23:06 +0000
          Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code blp@cs.stanford.edu (Ben Pfaff) - 2012-01-17 15:32 -0800
            Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2012-01-18 00:40 +0000
              Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code Seebs <usenet-nospam@seebs.net> - 2012-01-18 18:35 +0000
                Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2012-01-18 19:15 +0000
                Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code Seebs <usenet-nospam@seebs.net> - 2012-01-21 21:32 +0000
            Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code "io_x" <a@b.c.invalid> - 2012-01-18 07:26 +0100
              Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code "Joachim Schmitz" <nospam.jojo@schmitz-digital.de> - 2012-01-18 11:07 +0100
                Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code Seebs <usenet-nospam@seebs.net> - 2012-01-21 21:32 +0000
                Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2012-01-22 10:42 +1300
                Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code "io_x" <a@b.c.invalid> - 2012-01-22 18:53 +0100
                Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code "io_x" <a@b.c.invalid> - 2012-01-22 19:00 +0100
                Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code "io_x" <a@b.c.invalid> - 2012-01-23 19:28 +0100
              Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code Stephen Sprunk <stephen@sprunk.org> - 2012-01-18 08:44 -0600
              Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code James Dow Allen <jdallen2000@yahoo.com> - 2012-01-18 07:09 -0800
                Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code "io_x" <a@b.c.invalid> - 2012-01-18 17:44 +0100
        Re: Writing "absolutely" portable code Seebs <usenet-nospam@seebs.net> - 2012-01-18 07:58 +0000

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