Fragile ABI

[Paulo Pinto]

On Wednesday, 22 August 2012 at 12:56:12 UTC, Michel Fortin wrote:
> On 2012-08-22 06:32:29 +0000, "Paulo Pinto" 
> <pjmlp at progtools.org> said:
>
>> On Wednesday, 22 August 2012 at 00:15:12 UTC, David Piepgrass 
>> wrote:
>>>> Lets see how the improved COM (WinRT) turns out to be.
>>> 
>>> Sadly, WinRT is again intended to be Windows-only, so 
>>> developers like me that hate lock-in will avoid it in 
>>> preference for .NET (hi Mono!) and yucky old C.
>> 
>> Because UNIX systems are still in the stone age in terms of 
>> ABI, as they
>> barely changes since the 70's and no one seems to care enough 
>> to change things.
>> 
>> I like UNIX a lot, but got to know it, after knowing what is 
>> possible in more advanced languages, so it always dismays me 
>> that specially when dealing with most commercial UNIX it feels 
>> like being in the 70's computing age.
>> 
>> So that lives only Apple and Microsoft with room for real OS 
>> innovation in mainstream OS, and like any vendor they prefer 
>> to look for solutions that fit only their OS.
>> 
>> Mac OS x is also UNIX, but Apple has been changing it already 
>> quite a lot compared with the other vendors, hence my Apple 
>> remark.
>
> Actually, the difference is standardization. Microsoft's COM 
> and Apple's Objective-C runtime are built on top of C APIs (and 
> you can access them through C if you want, although it's a 
> little awkward). COM implementations and Objective-C runtime 
> implementations exist for other UNIXes too, as well as other 
> similar things, but no one is pushing them enough for them to 
> become a standard.

Yes, I have to agree.

Wasn't Taligent something in that direction?

--
Paulo