To be smug, or not to be smug, that is the question

Dan Kegel (dank@alumni.caltech.edu)
Mon, 18 Jan 1999 22:48:11 -0800

"Albert D. Cahalan" <acahalan@cs.uml.edu> writes:
> Blocking system calls were a bad idea. Signals were added to unix
> to address the lack of a general event queue. Since longjump won't
> get you out of one of those crummy blocking system calls, some
> fool made signals interrupt system calls. As a patch on top of
> a patch on top of a patch, app programmers need to wrap system
> calls in loops. Patching the brokenness even more, we see Netscape
> talking to itself to get around a stupid race condition. Since
> the unixy API does not support dispatching concurrent system calls,
> someone added the aio_* functions to "fix" it for the limited case
> of simple disk IO. All along the way people find hacks for their
> own immediate problem rather than fixing the API.

I think he hit a nail on the head somewhere there...
a single uniform mechanism for waiting for stuff was
what I liked so much about select(), but now I see it
isn't up to the task. Sun had a modified select() back in
SunWindows days to allow you to wait for UI events, too;
I wonder if there's an elegant generalization to select()
that could be useful in the future?

Ian McKellar <imckellar@harvestroad.com.au> wrote:
> Remeber to use the word "legacy" when referring to NT systems. NT was so
> 1995. Linux is the latest-and-greatest thing :)

I don't feel comfortable being so smug, at least in public.
Let's underpromise and overperform instead of the other way around.

- Dan

-- 
Speaking only for myself, not for my employer


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