5 ms·

Who cares about POSIX? And yeah, Redox is how "we replace C". A full operating system where C is not the main language.

• tzahola 9y ago
  Why does an OS have a “main” language?
  • vbezhenar 9y ago
    If you know this language, you can change any part of OS. I think that's a valuable asset. For example if you're using OpenBSD and know C, you can hack anything from kernel to smtp daemon. If you're OS is written with 10 languages, it's much harder to learn them all.
    • adrianmonk 9y ago
      That's a good argument for keeping the set of languages limited. But it doesn't necessarily have to be just one.
      • ibotty 9y ago
        It never is. Even ancient unix had shell and (maybe more to your point) yacc. Yacc still generates C files, but that's more of an implementation detail. The C _interop_ is key.
        • pjmlp 9y ago
          > The C _interop_ is key. On UNIX compatible OSes, others not so much.
          • ibotty 9y ago
            Well, of course! I was talking about why yacc is a second language for (early and contemporary) unix. Its C interop for (early and contemporary) unix is what I was stressing.
            • pjmlp 9y ago
              Ah ok, sorry for being pedantic. You are fully right.
  • tonyg 9y ago
    There's such a strong connection between the idea of "programming language runtime" and "operating system" (resource management, I/O management, task scheduling, package management, upgrade management, lifecycle management, version control, configuration management, user interface, etc.) that it makes sense both to - think of a PL as an OS (Smalltalk, Erlang, JVM) - think of an OS as a PL The latter leads to the idea that there might be a "main language" for an OS in the same way there's a "main language" for Smalltalk, Erlang, and JVM runtimes (Smalltalk, Erlang, and Java, respectively), and "auxiliary languages" that fit into the same runtimes (Java/Self/etc, Elixir/LFE/etc, and Scala/Clojure/Kotlin/etc, respectively).
• favorited 9y ago
  Anyone who ships software to multiple operating systems? Anyone who maintains a port? And, transitively, the users of that software.
  • pjmlp 9y ago
    > Anyone who ships software to multiple operating systems? You can do that without direct dependencies to POSIX. I don't care how .NET, Java, Go, Free Pascal, Ruby, Python, Perl,Swift, D, C++... implement their runtimes, unless I actually need to look under the hood.
• zbentley 9y ago
  Go write a complex program for Windows 95, without unix/cygwin helpers. Or for DOS. Then come back and explain to me who cares about POSIX. It'll be an educational experience.
  • pjmlp 9y ago
    I don't care. Started doing desktop software development on MS-DOS 3.3. POSIX is only relevant for C, the bits that they felt shouldn't be part of ANSI C, not to impose UNIX semantics on other OSes. It is completly irrelevant on programming languages with rich runtimes or good package managers available.
  • tonyg 9y ago
    Are you saying that the only people who care about POSIX are those saddled with legacy systems that they can't get rid of? That actually sounds about right to me.
    • zbentley 9y ago
      They aren't the only ones, but there's some truth there. POSIX, and other similar uniform standards, are very much a "you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone" type of thing.