5 ms·

> Has this been achieved with software components in any niche? Isn't this what "programs" and "files" do? There used to be a time when computers were really o

> Has this been achieved with software components in any niche? Isn't this what "programs" and "files" do? There used to be a time when computers were really one (or few) trick machines but since the time when anyone could install any program on their computer and have programs work with any file (regardless of which program originally made it), software on the whole is as modular (if not more modular) as hardware. (which is also why i dislike the trend that iOS created with software being isolated both in terms of execution and file access, except a few preapproved holes here and there)

digi_owl 9y ago
Unix style pipes as well. Frankly all that is needed is a defined IPC protocol that the market sticks to. But sadly that has been an hard sell when devs see such protocols more like a ball and chain.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  > Frankly all that is needed is a defined IPC protocol that the market sticks to. We had one, and then we botched it. So now we went from HTML->HTML+JS->JS->webassembly. These are all steps back, not forward, soon we'll be simply using HTTP to ship application binaries that you no longer have any rights at all to, it is in many ways a situation worse than the one where everybody bought shrink wrapped software.
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    And it will be coded everything in free software, hidden away behind server virtual walls, without a dime or any kind of compensation being given back to the original developers.
jacquesm 9y ago
> There used to be a time when computers were really one (or few) trick machines You mean the time when programming was done with plug boards? Computers have been more or less universal since the time RAM was used to execute the programs, the fact that files are a convenient way to organize data does noes not detract from the fact that the internal structure of a file needs to be known if you want another program to make sense out of it. In that sense the text file is the most enabling element here, and binary files with unknown structure the least. The ability to quickly load a program quickly (rather than to load it in through elaborate means such as plugboards, switches, punched cards, paper tape or magnetic reel-to-reel tape) definitely has had a lot of effect on the universal application of computers but that doesn't mean they weren't universal machines. And even in the time of plug boards there were tricks that would keep multiple programs active by means of switching out an entire bank or segment of configured boards for another. Software is as modular as the hardware it runs on permits, but it can also very effectively restrict or expand that modularity, a nice example of this is virtual machines which present a machine entirely different than the one that the original hardware embodies.
- laumars 9y ago
  > Computers have been more or less universal since the time RAM was used to execute the programs, the fact that files are a convenient way to organize data does noes not detract from the fact that the internal structure of a file needs to be known if you want another program to make sense out of it. > In that sense the text file is the most enabling element here, and binary files with unknown structure the least. text files haven't always been universal. There used to be different text encodings (ASCII hasn't always been universal) and even different sizes of byte (eg some systems would have 6 or 7 bits to a byte). And even if two machines you're wanting to share data between were both an 8bit ASCII system; there's no guarantee that they would share the same dialect of BASIC, LISP, Pascal or C.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    ASCII isn't universal even today (the page you are reading is UNICODE), but all text was much more readable and in general easier to process with ad-hoc filtering or other manipulation than binary formats. This is what underpins most of the power of UNIX, but at the same time is something of a weak point: good and error free text processing is actually quite hard.
    - laumars 9y ago
      > ASCII isn't universal even today (the page you are reading is UNICODE) That's not really a fair point because Unicode and nearly all of the other extended character sets (if not all of them) still follow ASCII for the lower ranges. This also includes Windows Code Pages, ISO-8859 (which itself contains more than a dozen different character sets) and all of the Unicode character sets too. > but all text was much more readable and in general easier to process with ad-hoc filtering or other manipulation than binary formats. Text is still a binary format. If you have a different byte size or significantly different enough base character set then you will still end up with gibberish. This is something we've come to take for granted in the "modern" era of ASCII but back in the day "copying text files" between incompatible systems would produce more garbage than just a few badly rendered characters or the carriage return issues you get when switching between UNIX and Windows.
lmm 9y ago
> (which is also why i dislike the trend that iOS created with software being isolated both in terms of execution and file access, except a few preapproved holes here and there) It seems to be the way consumer software is going though. It's a bizarre truism that we still aren't very good at sending files from one computer to another, even as we've got a lot better at specific cases like sharing photos or collaboratively editing documents. Maybe the lowest-common-denominator file model isn't good enough?
- digi_owl 9y ago
  In large part because we can't dial a computer like we dial a phone. This in part because everything consumer is sitting behind a NAT to try to stretch IPv4 as far as possible.

digi_owl 9y ago

Unix style pipes as well. Frankly all that is needed is a defined IPC protocol that the market sticks to. But sadly that has been an hard sell when devs see such protocols more like a ball and chain.

jacquesm 9y ago
> Frankly all that is needed is a defined IPC protocol that the market sticks to. We had one, and then we botched it. So now we went from HTML->HTML+JS->JS->webassembly. These are all steps back, not forward, soon we'll be simply using HTTP to ship application binaries that you no longer have any rights at all to, it is in many ways a situation worse than the one where everybody bought shrink wrapped software.
- pjmlp 9y ago
  And it will be coded everything in free software, hidden away behind server virtual walls, without a dime or any kind of compensation being given back to the original developers.

jacquesm 9y ago

> There used to be a time when computers were really one (or few) trick machines You mean the time when programming was done with plug boards? Computers have been more or less universal since the time RAM was used to execute the programs, the fact that files are a convenient way to organize data does noes not detract from the fact that the internal structure of a file needs to be known if you want another program to make sense out of it. In that sense the text file is the most enabling element here, and binary files with unknown structure the least. The ability to quickly load a program quickly (rather than to load it in through elaborate means such as plugboards, switches, punched cards, paper tape or magnetic reel-to-reel tape) definitely has had a lot of effect on the universal application of computers but that doesn't mean they weren't universal machines. And even in the time of plug boards there were tricks that would keep multiple programs active by means of switching out an entire bank or segment of configured boards for another. Software is as modular as the hardware it runs on permits, but it can also very effectively restrict or expand that modularity, a nice example of this is virtual machines which present a machine entirely different than the one that the original hardware embodies.

laumars 9y ago
> Computers have been more or less universal since the time RAM was used to execute the programs, the fact that files are a convenient way to organize data does noes not detract from the fact that the internal structure of a file needs to be known if you want another program to make sense out of it. > In that sense the text file is the most enabling element here, and binary files with unknown structure the least. text files haven't always been universal. There used to be different text encodings (ASCII hasn't always been universal) and even different sizes of byte (eg some systems would have 6 or 7 bits to a byte). And even if two machines you're wanting to share data between were both an 8bit ASCII system; there's no guarantee that they would share the same dialect of BASIC, LISP, Pascal or C.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  ASCII isn't universal even today (the page you are reading is UNICODE), but all text was much more readable and in general easier to process with ad-hoc filtering or other manipulation than binary formats. This is what underpins most of the power of UNIX, but at the same time is something of a weak point: good and error free text processing is actually quite hard.
  - laumars 9y ago
    > ASCII isn't universal even today (the page you are reading is UNICODE) That's not really a fair point because Unicode and nearly all of the other extended character sets (if not all of them) still follow ASCII for the lower ranges. This also includes Windows Code Pages, ISO-8859 (which itself contains more than a dozen different character sets) and all of the Unicode character sets too. > but all text was much more readable and in general easier to process with ad-hoc filtering or other manipulation than binary formats. Text is still a binary format. If you have a different byte size or significantly different enough base character set then you will still end up with gibberish. This is something we've come to take for granted in the "modern" era of ASCII but back in the day "copying text files" between incompatible systems would produce more garbage than just a few badly rendered characters or the carriage return issues you get when switching between UNIX and Windows.

lmm 9y ago

> (which is also why i dislike the trend that iOS created with software being isolated both in terms of execution and file access, except a few preapproved holes here and there) It seems to be the way consumer software is going though. It's a bizarre truism that we still aren't very good at sending files from one computer to another, even as we've got a lot better at specific cases like sharing photos or collaboratively editing documents. Maybe the lowest-common-denominator file model isn't good enough?

digi_owl 9y ago
In large part because we can't dial a computer like we dial a phone. This in part because everything consumer is sitting behind a NAT to try to stretch IPv4 as far as possible.