4 ms·

There definitely are more options than applications reading and writing character streams, you’re just not even considering them because you’re too entrenched i

by 9dev 2y ago

There definitely are more options than applications reading and writing character streams, you’re just not even considering them because you’re too entrenched in the environment you’re familiar with. Take Powershell for example; the syntax may be horrible, but the way it passes structured data is truly different and way ahead of classic UNIX shells. The design space is huge; just dismissing any possible improvements before even sitting down and thinking properly is frankly not a good strategy.

theamk 2y ago
If the design space is so huge, how about giving some examples, instead of insulting people who disagree with you? Surely you'll be able to do so, while satisfying the requirements I listed? Because Powershell doesn't satisfy them. You are not going to save Powershell object stream yo CI output or provisioner logs. You are not going to send objects over SSH, or over web console, or over BMC-emulated serial port. In all of those cases it's going to be good old stream of characters, with the occasional control sequence from more advanced programs. You can have whatever rich datatypes inside your application (powrshell isn't the first, I remember reading about LISP shells back in 2000's), but at some moment you have to talk with other systems, and that's when you will have to switch to character streams. (that said, the current escape sequences could use lots of improvement. That's not going to change fundamental concept though)