Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Posix Has Become Outdated (2016) [pdf]

cs.columbia.edu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 246 posts

Re: Posix Has Become Outdated (2016) [pdf]

#111

Post by AnonymousPlanet »

JdeBP wrote: post #74
AnonymousPlanet wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the end of the 80s and throughout the 90s, a common belief was that the CLI could be completely replaced by the GUI, one just hadn't yet figured out how. The GUI, however, never delivered those last 10-20% that you need in automation or in a context that requires reproducibility. Windows NT was designed towards those promises, but eventually Microsoft realised their mistake and created - ten years ago - Powershell…

Microsoft didn't have a mistake to realize. From very early on, one of the must-have toolsets for Windows NT was the Windows NT Resource Kit, with a whole bunch of command-line tools -- provided by Microsoft. There was in fact a whole load of command-line tooling for Windows NT, well before PowerShell and back to version 3.1 . Far from this being the reversal that you propound, actual history is even more in favour o…

Look at the design of NT. Every output is based on IPC and calls to the event logger. That something like a stdout exists is due to backwards compatibility and mostly the Posix subsystem. The entire OS was meant to be used and administrated by means of GUI. The existence of a bunch of CLI tools that deviate from the main paradigm doesn't prove anything to the contrary. Have a look at the literature on the design and concepts of NT.

Re: Posix Has Become Outdated (2016) [pdf]

#112

Post by nickpsecurity »

geezerjay wrote: post #99
pjmlp wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

> Try to write a modern iOS, OS X, Windows, Android, ChromeOS UWP with standardized POSIX interfaces. You're confusing popularity with being outdated. It's irrelevant if some vendors intentionallly go out of their way to avoid implementing any standard interface which, in the very least, can't be controlled by them. And it's also absurd that you're quoting platforms which even restrict which programming language can…

"You're confusing popularity with being outdated."

POSIX was supposed to be popular to the point of default way that apps were written. It failed. Whereas there's quite a bit of portable apps on (insert framework here). They succeeded with many running on non-UNIX OS's, too. You'll need those or similar things in your code instead of POSIX for truly, portable apps. That's his point.

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

#114

Post by nickpsecurity »

gkya wrote: post #95
johannes1234321 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly the point of the report: Hardly anybody uses POSIX. Many people use frameworks on top of it though. If POSIX would go away many won't notice.

Isn't a nice common interface that those frameworks and higher-level language libraries and interpreters can be written for a nice thing? It's like a nice road network, you sure want to be in your car not on the road, but it's better if most of it is good for the common tire, you don't want to change your tires at every turn.

It's a nice thing if you're trying to run on many UNIX's. Most projects just target one these days: Linux. If it's mobile supported, then add Android which is also a Linux. That means they'd only have to code the portability framework for 1-2 POSIX-like OS's. POSIX offers about no advantage there. They'll just wrap it like they did Windows and Mac.

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

#115

Post by AnonymousPlanet »

coldtea wrote: post #73
AnonymousPlanet wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the end of the 80s and throughout the 90s, a common belief was that the CLI could be completely replaced by the GUI, one just hadn't yet figured out how. The GUI, however, never delivered those last 10-20% that you need in automation or in a context that requires reproducibility. Windows NT was designed towards those promises, but eventually Microsoft realised their mistake and created - ten years ago - Powershell…

> At the end of the 80s and throughout the 90s, a common belief was that the CLI could be completely replaced by the GUI And it has, except for backend programmers. Most Windows programmers stay all day in Visual Studio and the like, for example. But as far as end users as concerned, that is the 99% of computer users, the CLI might as well not exist.

Most Windows programmers I know have never really used an environment that doesn't punish you for using the command line. So what's your point? That most people you know never realised that many of their daily tasks can be easily automated if they wouldn't think that endless, tedious clickfests are the norm, and that this somehow proves that the CLI is obsolete?

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

#116

Post by nickpsecurity »

JdeBP wrote: post #90
bluejekyll wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the point that those are the most prolific platforms, where a common API to the system, POSIX, would be most beneficial to us as developers? But it's simply not possible to do? From what I can tell POSIX has been replaced by per language stdlibs, with the portability of your software tied to the portability of a languages stdlib. POSIX was mainly designed for C, most other languages have a higher level abstract…

POSIX wasn't designed, per se. It's a standard, a lot of which was the codification of existing practices on operating systems where the C language was the primary language. Also note the existence of FORTRAN language bindings, and the low level but persistent rumbles about C++ language bindings that have continued for the past 20 years or so. Then note the number of languages where the doco tells you all about how "…

"POSIX wasn't designed, per se. It's a standard, a lot of which was the codification of existing practices on operating systems where the C language was the primary language."

That's what I was going to say about UNIX, C, and POSIX. The UNIX and C languages' made tradeoffs specifically oriented around the weak hardware they had. We no longer need those. POSIX evolved from a bunch of competing vendors doing a mix of justifiable and weird stuff with a standard trying to abstract it all. It's inherently going to be worse than a clean design over the smaller number of modern UNIXen without all the politics that went into POSIX.

And then we have fact that many portable apps need to run on Windows, Mac, iPhone, etc POSIX ranged from useless to lacking platform-specific capabilities on these. So, a clean-slate design covering each of these platforms is the obvious solution. Fortunately, we have a bunch of them with varying styles and tradeoffs to choose from. :)

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

#117

Post by nickpsecurity »

pjmlp wrote: post #61
tmalsburg2 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter example: Almost everyone uses the Apache webserver when they browse the web, but hardly anyone even knows what that is. We could easily compile a long list of similar crucial infrastructure software that virtually everyone is using and that doesn't have graphical user interfaces.

How much of Apache is pure POSIX and how much are #ifdef around OS specific APIs?

Apache uses the Apache Portable Runtime:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Portable_Runtime

That's one of the competitors to POSIX for application portability. Unlike POSIX, it was totally open as well vs people telling me The Open Group will sell me a copy of full standard.

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

#119

Post by geezerjay »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #112
geezerjay wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Try to write a modern iOS, OS X, Windows, Android, ChromeOS UWP with standardized POSIX interfaces. You're confusing popularity with being outdated. It's irrelevant if some vendors intentionallly go out of their way to avoid implementing any standard interface which, in the very least, can't be controlled by them. And it's also absurd that you're quoting platforms which even restrict which programming language can…

"You're confusing popularity with being outdated." POSIX was supposed to be popular to the point of default way that apps were written. It failed. Whereas there's quite a bit of portable apps on (insert framework here). They succeeded with many running on non-UNIX OS's, too. You'll need those or similar things in your code instead of POSIX for truly, portable apps. That's his point.

> POSIX was supposed to be popular to the point

If you read up on why companies such as Microsoft make it their point to break and avoid standards, you would understand why your comments regarding "popularity" are moot.

Business strategies don't make or break technical merits.

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

#120

Post by nj923f »

ycmbntrthrwaway wrote: post #60
tmalsburg2 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter example: Almost everyone uses the Apache webserver when they browse the web, but hardly anyone even knows what that is. We could easily compile a long list of similar crucial infrastructure software that virtually everyone is using and that doesn't have graphical user interfaces.

Count sendmail in: > There is some sort of perverse pleasure in knowing that it's basically impossible to send a piece of hate mail through the Internet without its being touched by a gay program. That's kind of funny.

sendmail is dead at this point though.
Post reply on HN