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Posix Has Become Outdated (2016) [pdf]

cs.columbia.edu

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Re: Posix Has Become Outdated (2016) [pdf]

#21

Post by lrem »

pjmlp wrote: post #12
milesrout wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they haven't. Stop believing everything you read on reddit. Java didn't displace C++, and C++ certainly hasn't displaced C.

> Java didn't displace C++ C++ has become an infrastructure language on the enterprise. We write native libraries in it, like COM components, or plugins that interact with Python, Lua, Java, .NET, Node,... VMs. No one writes full stack applications in C++ any longer, other than maintaining the existing ones. Even game engines have moved into a mix of C++ + higher level language. On the mobile OSes, C++ only has GUI s…

> No one writes full stack applications in C++ any longer, other than maintaining the existing ones.

That is not my experience. Somehow both me and my wife ended up developing new C++ applications for a living.

Re: Posix Has Become Outdated (2016) [pdf]

#23

Post by pjmlp »

lrem wrote: post #21
pjmlp wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Java didn't displace C++ C++ has become an infrastructure language on the enterprise. We write native libraries in it, like COM components, or plugins that interact with Python, Lua, Java, .NET, Node,... VMs. No one writes full stack applications in C++ any longer, other than maintaining the existing ones. Even game engines have moved into a mix of C++ + higher level language. On the mobile OSes, C++ only has GUI s…

> No one writes full stack applications in C++ any longer, other than maintaining the existing ones. That is not my experience. Somehow both me and my wife ended up developing new C++ applications for a living.

Are you developing those C++ applications for the enterprise?

Can you disclose which type of full stack applications are those?

Re: Posix Has Become Outdated (2016) [pdf]

#24

Post by pjmlp »

cperciva wrote: post #18

The original goal of the POSIX standard was application source code portability. However, modern applications are no longer being written to standardized POSIX interfaces. Speak for yourself.

Try to write a modern iOS, OS X, Windows, Android, ChromeOS UWP with standardized POSIX interfaces.

Re: Posix Has Become Outdated (2016) [pdf]

#25

Post by moby_click »

milesrout wrote: post #6
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

POSIX compliance is important if you value portability - especially for business critical systems (e.g. you want your bank's transaction processing data to work on IBM Z/Series's UNIX, whatever Linux distro they use, and say... SunOS). My main takeaway from the article is POSIX is too antiquated and anemic as a "system API" for modern-day use - however I'm surprised the article doesn't seem to touch upon POSIX shortc…

POSIX is neither antiquated nor anemic. There's nothing antiquated about a hierarchical filesystem with a single root. There's nothing antiquated about 'everything is a file'. In fact, that's continually useful to me on a day-to-day basis. There's nothing antiquated about byte streams, which is all they are. They aren't text streams. A great example of how all of this turns out to be good design is that you can see h…

> There's nothing antiquated about a hierarchical filesystem with a single root.

Unfortunately the hierarchical structure is lost in the name. It's one flat string and '/' and NUL have special meaning.

In a way, containers show that there is a legitimate need for multiple roots.

Re: Posix Has Become Outdated (2016) [pdf]

#26

Post by LukeShu »

ndesaulniers wrote: post #22
jonathankoren wrote: post #10

Sometimes I wish ACLs were better supported.

Isn't that what SELinux is for when they say it's Mandatory Access Control? Or are those two different things?

MAC and ACL are two different things.

On Linux, ACL is the "facl" family of functions functions (and the set/getfacl programs). These supplement the traditional owner/group and mode bits. Essentially, it allows you to set a separate set of read/write/execute bits on a file for an arbitrary number of specific users or groups, rather than being limited to simply "owner", "group", "everyone-else". If anything is set beyond the normal owner/group/world, GNU `ls -l` indicates this with a "+" next to the normal mode bits. I'm unsure how much this changes for other kernels.

Re: Posix Has Become Outdated (2016) [pdf]

#27

Post by ndesaulniers »

lrem wrote: post #21
pjmlp wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Java didn't displace C++ C++ has become an infrastructure language on the enterprise. We write native libraries in it, like COM components, or plugins that interact with Python, Lua, Java, .NET, Node,... VMs. No one writes full stack applications in C++ any longer, other than maintaining the existing ones. Even game engines have moved into a mix of C++ + higher level language. On the mobile OSes, C++ only has GUI s…

> No one writes full stack applications in C++ any longer, other than maintaining the existing ones. That is not my experience. Somehow both me and my wife ended up developing new C++ applications for a living.

"There are literally dozens of us!"

FWIW, I think C++ is killing it on mobile and many other platforms and disagree with the post you responded to. Just pointing out that 2 samples isn't statistically significant.

Re: Posix Has Become Outdated (2016) [pdf]

#28

Post by pjmlp »

ndesaulniers wrote: post #22
jonathankoren wrote: post #10

Sometimes I wish ACLs were better supported.

Isn't that what SELinux is for when they say it's Mandatory Access Control? Or are those two different things?

It is different, in any case SELinux as the name implies is Linux specific.

Re: Posix Has Become Outdated (2016) [pdf]

#29

Post by cperciva »

ndesaulniers wrote: post #22
jonathankoren wrote: post #10

Sometimes I wish ACLs were better supported.

Isn't that what SELinux is for when they say it's Mandatory Access Control? Or are those two different things?

They're related, but not the same. ACLs are Access Control Lists; basically a more sophisticated version of UNIX permissions. Mandatory Access Control is about restricting what users can put into their ACLs; e.g., "Alice is not allowed to make any of her files readable by Bob".

Re: Posix Has Become Outdated (2016) [pdf]

#30

Post by pjmlp »

ndesaulniers wrote: post #27
lrem wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one writes full stack applications in C++ any longer, other than maintaining the existing ones. That is not my experience. Somehow both me and my wife ended up developing new C++ applications for a living.

"There are literally dozens of us!" FWIW, I think C++ is killing it on mobile and many other platforms and disagree with the post you responded to. Just pointing out that 2 samples isn't statistically significant.

Where are the C++ killer applications on iOS and Android, besides game engines, written 100% in C++?

Where is C++ on the iOS and Android documentation versus Objective-C, Swift and Java?

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