The portability sacred cow

From	jacob navia <jacob@spamsink.net>
Newsgroups	comp.lang.c
Subject	The portability sacred cow
Date	2014-04-20 23:14 +0200
Organization	lccwin
Message-ID	<lj1db3$ieu$1@speranza.aioe.org> (permalink)

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If there is a common sacred cow in this newsgroup it is the 
"portability" sacred cow.

In the name of it everything will be accepted. Portability means in this 
context, let's take the worst system around, and make it the common 
base. Reject all the improvements that other software contexts offer and 
just use the worst. This will guarantee that your code runs everywhere

Now, there is no free lunch and the portability crazyness has some 
obvious costs.

For instance, OpenBSD has a function free() that is security conscious 
and erases the freed memory before reuse. This would have stopped the 
heartbleed bug in OpenSSL but it wasn't used.

Why?

Because some systems had a very slow "malloc" function and the OpenSSL 
team decided to write their own malloc/free replacements. Also in the 
name of portability, all kinds of cruft was left cluttering the code to 
cater systems like VMS, for instance, that nobody uses today.

Because, portability has a REAL COST, in terms of levelling by the lower 
common denominator, making for a conservative attitude (that fits this 
newsgroup very well) that hinders progress in software development and 
provokes all kinds of cruft to be added to ALL implementation of a 
software to cater for the bug of some system.

Portability should be weighted with USABILITY and STABILITY, two things 
that we never discuss since they tend to be non portable :-)

In my opinion, portability comes AFTER STABILITY and USABILITY, well 
after those.

jacob

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The portability sacred cow jacob navia <jacob@spamsink.net> - 2014-04-20 23:14 +0200
  Re: The portability sacred cow jacob navia <jacob@spamsink.net> - 2014-04-20 23:34 +0200
    Re: The portability sacred cow Geoff <geoff@invalid.invalid> - 2014-04-20 21:20 -0700
      Re: The portability sacred cow gazelle@shell.xmission.com (Kenny McCormack) - 2014-04-21 04:35 +0000
      Re: The portability sacred cow Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2014-04-21 05:10 +0000
        Re: The portability sacred cow gazelle@shell.xmission.com (Kenny McCormack) - 2014-04-21 05:31 +0000
        Re: The portability sacred cow <william@wilbur.25thandClement.com> - 2014-04-20 23:50 -0700
  Re: The portability sacred cow jacob navia <jacob@spamsink.net> - 2014-04-20 23:39 +0200
  Re: The portability sacred cow <william@wilbur.25thandClement.com> - 2014-04-20 23:37 -0700
    Re: The portability sacred cow Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2014-04-21 20:25 +1200
  Re: The portability sacred cow glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2014-04-21 07:10 +0000
  Re: The portability sacred cow Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2014-04-21 20:32 +1200
  Re: The portability sacred cow David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2014-04-21 16:46 +0200
    Re: The portability sacred cow <william@wilbur.25thandClement.com> - 2014-04-21 10:04 -0700
      Re: The portability sacred cow David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> - 2014-04-21 21:02 +0200
  Re: The portability sacred cow Malcolm McLean <malcolm.mclean5@btinternet.com> - 2014-04-22 02:52 -0700
    Re: The portability sacred cow Ian Collins <ian-news@hotmail.com> - 2014-04-22 23:18 +1200
      Re: The portability sacred cow gazelle@shell.xmission.com (Kenny McCormack) - 2014-04-22 11:49 +0000
    Re: The portability sacred cow jacob navia <jacob@spamsink.net> - 2014-04-22 14:48 +0200
    Re: The portability sacred cow Richard <rgrdev_@gmail.com> - 2014-04-22 14:58 +0100
      Re: The portability sacred cow Malcolm McLean <malcolm.mclean5@btinternet.com> - 2014-04-22 07:37 -0700
    Re: The portability sacred cow luser droog <luser.droog@gmail.com> - 2014-04-22 21:52 -0700
  Re: The portability sacred cow Johannes Bauer <dfnsonfsduifb@gmx.de> - 2014-04-22 16:58 +0200
    Re: The portability sacred cow jacob navia <jacob@spamsink.net> - 2014-04-22 17:24 +0200
      Re: The portability sacred cow jacob navia <jacob@spamsink.net> - 2014-04-22 17:25 +0200
    Re: The portability sacred cow Gareth Owen <gwowen@gmail.com> - 2014-04-22 19:11 +0100
  Re: The portability sacred cow jacob navia <jacob@spamsink.net> - 2014-04-22 21:59 +0200
    Re: The portability sacred cow Malcolm McLean <malcolm.mclean5@btinternet.com> - 2014-04-22 14:02 -0700
      Re: The portability sacred cow jacob navia <jacob@spamsink.net> - 2014-04-23 01:04 +0200
        Re: The portability sacred cow <william@wilbur.25thandClement.com> - 2014-04-22 17:52 -0700
          Re: The portability sacred cow <william@wilbur.25thandClement.com> - 2014-04-22 19:15 -0700
      Re: The portability sacred cow jacob navia <jacob@spamsink.net> - 2014-04-23 01:10 +0200
      Re: The portability sacred cow Thomas Jahns <jahns@idontlikespam.dkrz.de> - 2014-04-23 09:53 +0200
        Re: The portability sacred cow gazelle@shell.xmission.com (Kenny McCormack) - 2014-04-25 02:21 +0000
          Re: The portability sacred cow JohnF <john@please.see.sig.for.email.com> - 2014-04-25 06:36 +0000
            Re: The portability sacred cow Richard <rgrdev_@gmail.com> - 2014-04-25 14:02 +0200
            Re: The portability sacred cow gazelle@shell.xmission.com (Kenny McCormack) - 2014-04-25 18:17 +0000
              Re: The portability sacred cow Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2014-04-25 18:27 +0000
                Re: The portability sacred cow Malcolm McLean <malcolm.mclean5@btinternet.com> - 2014-04-25 21:57 -0700
                Re: The portability sacred cow Stephen Sprunk <stephen@sprunk.org> - 2014-04-26 00:02 -0500
                Re: The portability sacred cow Richard <rgrdev_@gmail.com> - 2014-04-26 11:35 +0200
                Re: The portability sacred cow JohnF <john@please.see.sig.for.email.com> - 2014-04-26 06:04 +0000
              Re: The portability sacred cow jacob navia <jacob@spamsink.net> - 2014-04-25 23:08 +0200
                Re: The portability sacred cow glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2014-04-25 21:52 +0000
          Re: The portability sacred cow Thomas Jahns <jahns@idontlikespam.dkrz.de> - 2014-04-25 11:27 +0200
            Re: The portability sacred cow Richard <rgrdev_@gmail.com> - 2014-04-25 14:03 +0200
              Re: The portability sacred cow gazelle@shell.xmission.com (Kenny McCormack) - 2014-04-25 18:18 +0000
              Re: The portability sacred cow "Bill Cunningham" <nospam@nspam.invalid> - 2014-04-26 20:04 -0400
            Re: The portability sacred cow Malcolm McLean <malcolm.mclean5@btinternet.com> - 2014-04-25 06:05 -0700
              Re: The portability sacred cow Thomas Jahns <jahns@idontlikespam.dkrz.de> - 2014-04-25 17:43 +0200
                Re: The portability sacred cow Keith Thompson <kst-u@mib.org> - 2014-04-25 10:48 -0700

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