<html><head><style>body{font-family:Helvetica,Arial;font-size:13px}</style></head><body style="word-wrap:break-word"><div id="bloop_customfont" style="font-family:Helvetica,Arial;font-size:13px;color:rgba(0,0,0,1.0);margin:0px;line-height:auto">On May 26, 2017 at 12:11:09 AM, Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa) via Digitalmars-d (<a href="mailto:digitalmars-d@puremagic.com">digitalmars-d@puremagic.com</a>) wrote:</div> <div><blockquote type="cite" class="clean_bq" style="font-family:Helvetica,Arial;font-size:13px;font-style:normal;font-variant-caps:normal;font-weight:normal;letter-spacing:normal;text-align:start;text-indent:0px;text-transform:none;white-space:normal;word-spacing:0px"><span><div><div></div><div>On 05/25/2017 01:04 PM, Jason King via Digitalmars-d wrote:<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br>><span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br>> I have no problems with an unstable ABI, what I have a problem is with<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br>> claiming to be a systems programming language AND not having a stable ABI.<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br>> You realistically cannot have both<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span><br><br>Why?<span class="Apple-converted-space"> </span></div></div></span></blockquote></div><p>Unless it’s a completely self contained system, if you are operating at the systems level, you are going to be providing the foundations for other people’s code to build on (vs. application level stuff where you’re already at the top). Just imagine if every time you applied Windows updates or applied a security fix to your OS of choice you had to rebuild every piece of software you have, and if providing it to others, provide corresponding versions of your code with every update and fix that was released with your OS — not because anything of yours changed, but because just because you wanted to fix a problem with the underlying system. Trying to build something on top of an unstable ABI is building your foundations on sand.</p><p>All I’m saying is if no attention is going to be paid to this (it doesn’t mean you can’t change the ABI, but it needs to be managed it better than ‘whoops!’), just stop claiming the systems bit and stay up stack where this isn’t a problem.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p> </p><p><br></p></body></html>