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The API being "standard" doesn't change it being bad. I mean, it is what it is and probably couldn't have been much better given historical reasons, but I think
by chousuke 7y ago
The API being "standard" doesn't change it being bad. I mean, it is what it is and probably couldn't have been much better given historical reasons, but I think it's still useful to think on how it fails and how to improve on it.
- ColanR 7y agoAt the low level of C and Unix, text is the language of the API. Something has to be that low-level - either the OS and the language it's written in, or the extra level of abstraction supporting the OS and its implementation language (in which case the complexity is much higher, and a lot more bugs would be exposed). Either way, there's going to be some point in the layers of abstraction where these kinds of errors are possible. I'm not seeing how an overall improvement could be made to the API without adding abstractions. To me, it seems better that there are fewer layers so that the architecture is clear, the elements of the OS and language are known, and the points where such errors are possible are clearly marked - as was done in this article submission.