Re: OT: Re: Jobst Brandt vs. Tire Glue

On 2007-08-02, jim beam <spamvortex@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Ben C wrote:
On 2007-08-01, Peter Cole <peter_cole@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
jim beam wrote:
Peter Cole wrote:
[...]
Linux was, and still is, a great choice for applications with narrow
requirements for hardware and software. It solved the easy (kernel)
problem well, but MS solved the hard one. Now that MS has largely
caught up on kernel performance and reliability, it's a contender in
even "narrow" systems.
yeah. "narrow" systems like bind, apache, sendmail.
They are narrow, in the sense that they are server apps that don't
have to deal with a plethora of peripherals and are singular
applications that don't have to integrate with a lot of others. How do
you define narrow?

The "integration of applications" is certainly different if you compare
Unix and Windows, but it's a design decision. Unix programs are
generally small and do one thing each,

and then there was emacs....

Yes, although that was the work of one particular rogue longhair :)

and, although other mechanisms
exist, they usually talk to each other only through the very simple and
restrictive interfaces of stdin, stdout and argv. Windows on the other
hand goes in for remote procedure calls (RPC) and object-oriented
variants of RPC resulting in applications exposing highly complex and
specific interfaces to each other. It's not that they really _need_ to
be like that, they just are, it's a different way of doing things.

it's not "different", it's called "lock out". they publish one set of
api's, then use another. "because they can". that was going to be the
big plan with m$ passport. died a death because the big institutions
knew they couldn't trust m$ not to lock them out of their own web apps.

Well, it's a mixture. Some of what they do is motivated by software
designers actually trying to create a good system that works well, but
commercial pressure is never far away. The engineers are just engineers,
it's how they're managed that makes the difference. If a Microsoft
engineer suggested something more like the Unix approach the business
people would immediately be worrying about how they could sell it and
what business advantages it conferred.

The fact that everything is primarily commercial for example leads to
huge glossy applications that apparently do everything and imply they do
more than do. The connections between them are therefore all hidden
beneath the surface. All this makes it harder for third parties to
develop apps to rival Microsoft ones. Sure they encourage a cottage
industry in apps for their platform of course, but not serious rivals
for cash cows like Office.

It's more about choosing a mindset than it is about practical
requirements. In most cases either will do the job.

yeah. one mindset just grips their ankles. the other gets on with
their job. but that's kind-of a catch 22. if the world stopped every
time the ankle grippers were getting it, they'd soon associate the pain
with lack of production and modify behavior accordingly. but because
the ones that just carry on with their job keep everything running, the
world keeps on turning, and the ankle grippers never join the dots.

Yup, that's about how it works.
.

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