"Microsoft Exploring Rust as the Solution for Safe Software"

[Lynn McGuire]

"Microsoft Exploring Rust as the Solution for Safe Software"
https://www.infoq.com/news/2019/11/microsoft-exploring-rust-safety/

I doubt it.

Lynn

[Öö Tiib]

Why? There is need and opportunity.
C# won't ever be useful for system programming. C, C++ and JavaScript
are wild and can not be tamed under control of any monster. D had just
too few changes to C++ to bother with it. Everything else is under
control of other monsters. So Rust is good opportunity to adopt
something from kindergarten and to spoil it.

[Melzzzzz]

I don't think it is about control. Rust is pain to program for novice,
exactly because it forces safety. Development time is also bigger. If
goal is safety in that kind of safety Rust is ok choice.
There were times I loved it (beginnings) then hated it, then I love it
again. One cannot be indeferent to Rust, that's for sure.


--
press any key to continue or any other to quit...
U ničemu ja ne uživam kao u svom statusu INVALIDA -- Zli Zec
Svi smo svedoci - oko 3 godine intenzivne propagande je dovoljno da jedan narod poludi -- Zli Zec
Na divljem zapadu i nije bilo tako puno nasilja, upravo zato jer su svi
bili naoruzani. -- Mladen Gogala

[Alf P. Steinbach]

On 02.12.2019 22:17, Melzzzzz wrote:
> One cannot be indeferent to Rust, that's for sure.

Why not? I am. I once downloaded a/the Rust implementation, wrote
"Hello, world!", and haven't bothered with it since.

- Alf

[Öö Tiib]

On Monday, 2 December 2019 23:17:41 UTC+2, Melzzzzz wrote:
> On 2019-12-02, Öö Tiib <oot...@hot.ee> wrote:
> > On Monday, 2 December 2019 21:59:31 UTC+2, Lynn McGuire wrote:
> >> "Microsoft Exploring Rust as the Solution for Safe Software"
> >> https://www.infoq.com/news/2019/11/microsoft-exploring-rust-safety/
> >>
> >> I doubt it.
> >
> > Why? There is need and opportunity.
> > C# won't ever be useful for system programming. C, C++ and JavaScript
> > are wild and can not be tamed under control of any monster. D had just
> > too few changes to C++ to bother with it. Everything else is under
> > control of other monsters. So Rust is good opportunity to adopt
> > something from kindergarten and to spoil it.
>
> I don't think it is about control. Rust is pain to program for novice,
> exactly because it forces safety. Development time is also bigger. If
> goal is safety in that kind of safety Rust is ok choice.
> There were times I loved it (beginnings) then hated it, then I love it
> again. One cannot be indeferent to Rust, that's for sure.

Who knows? Google has Go and Apple has Swift so perhaps Microsoft
also wants to have some garbage-free programming language.
The syntax of Rust is not that different from Swift or Go.
However the compiler feels like impressive effort of limiting
ways to express nonsense. Actually what does it matter how
easy it is to write some incoherent and buggy programs? There
are no such "gotcha!" bear traps in Rust like C++ is full of
and so it perhaps suits novices better than C++.

[Pankaj Jangid]

Actually, it is considering implementing a new language inspired by
Rust. https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-were-creating-a-new-rust-based-programming-language-for-secure-coding/

--
Pankaj Jangid

[Cholo Lennon]

On 12/3/19 12:51 AM, Pankaj Jangid wrote:
> Actually, it is considering implementing a new language inspired by
> Rust. https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-were-creating-a-new-rust-based-programming-language-for-secure-coding/
>

OMG! I didn't know that, another programming language and what's worse,
created/sponsored by Microsoft :-O

I've already seen this several times... a company needs to have the
control of the tool (Microsoft/VisualBasic/VisualJ/C#/TypeScript/F#,
Sun/Java, Google/Go/Dart, JetBrains/Kotlin, etc)


--
Cholo Lennon
Bs.As.
ARG

[Kenny McCormack]

In article <qs4qb5$1qt5$1...@gioia.aioe.org>,

Not Invented Here Syndrome.

--
Just for a change of pace, this sig is *not* an obscure reference to
comp.lang.c...

[David Brown]

On 03/12/2019 10:40, Kenny McCormack wrote:
> In article <qs4qb5$1qt5$1...@gioia.aioe.org>,
> Cholo Lennon <cholo...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> On 12/3/19 12:51 AM, Pankaj Jangid wrote:
>>> Actually, it is considering implementing a new language inspired by
>>> Rust.
>> https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-were-creating-a-new-rust-based-programming-language-for-secure-coding/
>>>
>> OMG! I didn't know that, another programming language and what's worse,
>> created/sponsored by Microsoft :-O
>>
>> I've already seen this several times... a company needs to have the
>> control of the tool (Microsoft/VisualBasic/VisualJ/C#/TypeScript/F#,
>> Sun/Java, Google/Go/Dart, JetBrains/Kotlin, etc)
>
> Not Invented Here Syndrome.
>

Not /Controlled/ Here Syndrome.

MS were quite happy to support Java as long as they could make their own
incompatible version. When the courts said they were not allowed to do
that (and still call it "Java"), they went off in a huff and made C# as
their own alternative to Java which /they/ controlled.

(I don't think MS are as bad at this as they used to be, and I am not
implying that other companies are necessarily better.)

[Kenny McCormack]

In article <qs5e3e$91s$1...@dont-email.me>,
David Brown <david...@hesbynett.no> wrote:
...

>>
>> Not Invented Here Syndrome.
>
>Not /Controlled/ Here Syndrome.
>
>MS were quite happy to support Java as long as they could make their own
>incompatible version. When the courts said they were not allowed to do
>that (and still call it "Java"), they went off in a huff and made C# as
>their own alternative to Java which /they/ controlled.

Well, they controlled it because they had invented it.

I don't think we really disagree much here.

P.S. People often talk as if C# was invented by itself, as a standalone
language. In fact, C# is just one member of the .NET/CLR family. I think
of VB.NET as the primary .NET language. I suppose C# comes next after VB.

--
To my knowledge, Jacob Navia is not a Christian.

- Rick C Hodgin -

[David Brown]

On 03/12/2019 12:33, Kenny McCormack wrote:
> In article <qs5e3e$91s$1...@dont-email.me>,
> David Brown <david...@hesbynett.no> wrote:
> ...
>>>
>>> Not Invented Here Syndrome.
>>
>> Not /Controlled/ Here Syndrome.
>>
>> MS were quite happy to support Java as long as they could make their own
>> incompatible version. When the courts said they were not allowed to do
>> that (and still call it "Java"), they went off in a huff and made C# as
>> their own alternative to Java which /they/ controlled.
>
> Well, they controlled it because they had invented it.

Actually, I believe a fair amount of the work on dotnet / CLR was by
Borland originally, within their Delphi range. But I am not sure about
that (and it's getting a good deal off-topic here, even though they made
C++ compilers).

>
> I don't think we really disagree much here.

Not much, no, but you have the logic reversed. It is not "MS made C#,
so they get to control that language" - it is "MS wanted a language they
controlled, so they made C#".

[Manfred]

On 12/3/2019 4:24 PM, David Brown wrote:
> On 03/12/2019 12:33, Kenny McCormack wrote:
>> In article <qs5e3e$91s$1...@dont-email.me>,
>> David Brown <david...@hesbynett.no> wrote:
>> ...
>>>>
>>>> Not Invented Here Syndrome.
>>>
>>> Not /Controlled/ Here Syndrome.
>>>
>>> MS were quite happy to support Java as long as they could make their own
>>> incompatible version. When the courts said they were not allowed to do
>>> that (and still call it "Java"), they went off in a huff and made C# as
>>> their own alternative to Java which /they/ controlled.
>>
>> Well, they controlled it because they had invented it.
>
> Actually, I believe a fair amount of the work on dotnet / CLR was by
> Borland originally, within their Delphi range. But I am not sure about
> that (and it's getting a good deal off-topic here, even though they made
> C++ compilers).

C# was developed "originally" by Microsoft, but the lead architect of
the project was (still is?) Anders Hejlsberg, who formerly was the chief
architect of Turbo Pascal and Delphi at Borland.

>
>>
>> I don't think we really disagree much here.
>
> Not much, no, but you have the logic reversed. It is not "MS made C#,
> so they get to control that language" - it is "MS wanted a language they
> controlled, so they made C#".

Sounds pretty much like two sides of the same story.

Bottom line is that they control the runtime, so they ensure that C#
applications need the Windows ecosystem to run (Mono looks far too
limited as far as I have seen).

>
>>
>> P.S. People often talk as if C# was invented by itself, as a standalone
>> language. In fact, C# is just one member of the .NET/CLR family. I think
>> of VB.NET as the primary .NET language. I suppose C# comes next after VB.
>>
>

I think VB.NET was the primary target from the marketing point of view,
i.e. VB is a huge market for Microsoft, thus of primary relevance.
I doubt that C# can be seen as a derivative of VB.NET (which I know
little about, I have to admit), although contamination is evident.
I think it is mostly because of the need for interoperability, rather
than language derivation, though - one of the goals of C# was to talk
easily with VB and remove the complexity of COM.

[Chris M. Thomasson]

Microsoft/Q#

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

;^)

[Stuart Redmann]

Note that MS also made the integration of unmanaged C++ code into the
managed DotNet world very simple, something that is much harder to achieve
with Java (co-workers of mine constantly struggle with this, whereas I
enjoy the easy C++/CLI coding :-)

IMHO, this makes C# more than just a Java clone. I have done three large
projects (> 100kLOC) with C++/C#, and I enjoyed it very much.

Regards,
Stuart

PS: I was lying a little bit. When my managed C++ libraries wouldn't load
because boost::thread uses TLS somewhere inside, I spent an awful great
amount of time figuring this out :-/

[bol...@nowhere.co.uk]

Boost? Ugh. The sooner that hideous bloatware buggers off down the same rubbish
chute as Roguewaves APIs did back in the 00s the better. There's been little
good reason to use it since c++14 came out.

[Mr Flibble]

That's because a good deal of boost is now part of C++; if boost was rubbish that wouldn't have happened, idiot.

/Flibble

--
"Snakes didn't evolve, instead talking snakes with legs changed into snakes." - Rick C. Hodgin

“You won’t burn in hell. But be nice anyway.” – Ricky Gervais

“I see Atheists are fighting and killing each other again, over who doesn’t believe in any God the most. Oh, no..wait.. that never happens.” – Ricky Gervais

"Suppose it's all true, and you walk up to the pearly gates, and are confronted by God," Byrne asked on his show The Meaning of Life. "What will Stephen Fry say to him, her, or it?"
"I'd say, bone cancer in children? What's that about?" Fry replied.
"How dare you? How dare you create a world to which there is such misery that is not our fault. It's not right, it's utterly, utterly evil."
"Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world that is so full of injustice and pain. That's what I would say."

[bol...@nowhere.co.uk]

A good deal? Maybe 10%.

>that wouldn't have happened, idiot.

The average landfill has a few jems in it.

[Tim Rentsch]

Repeating a similar comment made in another posting, I propose
a rule of thumb for postings like this one: unless a posting is
likely to generate a substantial fraction of responses that are
simultaneously of interest in both comp.lang.c and comp.lang.c++,
it should be multi-posted rather than cross-posted (specifically
for c.l.c and c.l.c++).

[Bonita Montero]

>> "Microsoft Exploring Rust as the Solution for Safe Software"
>> https://www.infoq.com/news/2019/11/microsoft-exploring-rust-safety/
>> I doubt it.

> Repeating a similar comment made in another posting, I propose
> a rule of thumb for postings like this one: unless a posting is
> likely to generate a substantial fraction of responses that are
> simultaneously of interest in both comp.lang.c and comp.lang.c++,
> it should be multi-posted rather than cross-posted (specifically
> for c.l.c and c.l.c++).

The article is related to C as well as C++-programmers.
Multiposting is therefore stupid here.

[Richard]

[Please do not mail me a copy of your followup]

gaz...@shell.xmission.com (Kenny McCormack) spake the secret code
<qs5h5n$i9$1...@news.xmission.com> thusly:

>P.S. People often talk as if C# was invented by itself, as a standalone
>language. In fact, C# is just one member of the .NET/CLR family. I think
>of VB.NET as the primary .NET language. I suppose C# comes next after VB.

.NET is really just COM 2.0. Everything MS learned about binary
components with the huge success of COM was refined and made easier
with .NET/C#. Many times I have heard people say "C# is just a clone
of Java". So far every single one of those people has been someone who
hadn't done any significant programming on the Windows platform either
before or after the introduction of .NET. While .NET/C# shares some
ideas with Java, I dispute the idea that it is just a clone/copy of
Java.

The idea of programming to a virtual machine was around long before
Java. The IBM AS/400 is one obvious example that predates Java. So
this was not an invention that came from Java. Remove the JVM and
what you're left with is another OO curly brace style language, so
that also wasn't some kind of unique invention that originates with
Java.

Having done jobs where I did ~5 years of programming in both
languages, I find it much more pleasant to work in C# than to work in
Java. The only thing that was a pleasure while working in Java was
using IntelliJ for it's awesome refactoring and navigation
capabilities.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" free book <http://tinyurl.com/d3d-pipeline>
The Terminals Wiki <http://terminals-wiki.org>
The Computer Graphics Museum <http://computergraphicsmuseum.org>
Legalize Adulthood! (my blog) <http://legalizeadulthood.wordpress.com>

[rep_movsd]

MS did it before - remember the Singularity OS, Sing# and Spec# ?

MS keeps trying many things, but there is still Windows 3.1 code in Windows 10 and it wont ever go away.
Closer to home even the VC6 MSVCRT.DLL is still around in Windows AFAIK

[Ned Latham]

rep_movsd wrote:

----snip----

> MS did it before - remember the Singularity OS, Sing# and Spec# ?
>
> MS keeps trying many things, but there is still Windows 3.1 code in
> Windows 10

I very much doubt that. Windows 3.1 is a M$ kludge. Windows 10 is
descended from Windows NT, which was written by DEC.

----snip----

[Scott Lurndal]

Ned Latham <nedl...@woden.valhalla.oz> writes:

>rep_movsd wrote:

>> MS did it before - remember the Singularity OS, Sing# and Spec# ?
>>
>> MS keeps trying many things, but there is still Windows 3.1 code in
>> Windows 10
>
>I very much doubt that. Windows 3.1 is a M$ kludge. Windows 10 is
>descended from Windows NT, which was written by DEC.

Windows NT was written by Microsoft, led by former DEC engineer
(Dave Cutler). While there are some structural similarities between
VMS and NT sourcebases (I've worked with both), NT was certainly
_not_ written by DEC.

NT3.51 and NT4.0 (Win2k) both contained portions of Windows 3.1 in the
so-called 'Windows on Windows' subsystem.

[Ned Latham]

Scott Lurndal wrote:

> Ned Latham writes:
> > rep_movsd wrote:
> > >
> > > MS did it before - remember the Singularity OS, Sing# and Spec# ?
> > >
> > > MS keeps trying many things, but there is still Windows 3.1 code in
> > > Windows 10
> >
> > I very much doubt that. Windows 3.1 is a M$ kludge. Windows 10 is
> > descended from Windows NT, which was written by DEC.
>
> Windows NT was written by Microsoft, led by former DEC engineer
> (Dave Cutler).

It was written by a team hired from DEC led by Dave Cutler. Some members
of the M$ OS 2 team joined them. Note that DEC had control and use of NT
until well after delivery. Though it was written *for* M$, it took coding
far beyond the quality and capabilities that are the usual M$ fare.

To call it a M$ product is contractually correct, but wrong in every
other sense, AFAIC.

> While there are some structural similarities between
> VMS and NT sourcebases (I've worked with both), NT was certainly
> _not_ written by DEC.

True. Mea culpa for the overstatement.

> NT3.51 and NT4.0 (Win2k) both contained portions of Windows 3.1 in the
> so-called 'Windows on Windows' subsystem.

IOW, a partial emulator?

The best incarnation of NT was on the "screamer", the DEC Alpha.

IMO.

[Scott Lurndal]

Ned Latham <nedl...@woden.valhalla.oz> writes:

>Scott Lurndal wrote:

>
>> NT3.51 and NT4.0 (Win2k) both contained portions of Windows 3.1 in the
>> so-called 'Windows on Windows' subsystem.
>
>IOW, a partial emulator?

WoW used the intel vm86 mode to execute pure win3.1 code.

[Ned Latham]

Scott Lurndal wrote:

> Ned Latham writes:
> > Scott Lurndal wrote:
> > >
> > > NT3.51 and NT4.0 (Win2k) both contained portions of Windows 3.1 in the
> > > so-called 'Windows on Windows' subsystem.
> >
> > IOW, a partial emulator?
>
> WoW used the intel vm86 mode to execute pure win3.1 code.

Amazing. I cannot fathom why anyone would want backwards compatibility
with such a dud. Both Apple and RISC OS were streets ahead.

Although, come to think of it, a 1980s employer of mine had a large
database operation upgrade done, and the data entry machines specified
in the contract were Win 3.1 thin clients.

Euw!

[Melzzzzz]

This is because they don't wont to ditch old habits. Lame.

[Melzzzzz]

kernel only.
>
> ----snip----

[Ned Latham]

Melzzzzz wrote:

> Ned Latham wrote:
> > rep_movsd wrote:
> >
> > ----snip----
> >
> > > MS did it before - remember the Singularity OS, Sing# and Spec# ?
> > >
> > > MS keeps trying many things, but there is still Windows 3.1 code in
> > > Windows 10
> >
> > I very much doubt that. Windows 3.1 is a M$ kludge. Windows 10 is
> > descended from Windows NT, which was written by DEC.
>
> kernel only.

Actually a DEC team who had worked on VMS and were hired for the job.

I read in BYTE (Aug. 1985, IIRC) that after taking delivery, M$ set
about "improving" it. The example given by BYTE was the removal of
code that tested the graphics card before every write. For the speedup.

[Lynn McGuire]

You can read about the process to create Windows NT here, "Show
Stopper!: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next
Generation at Microsoft"

https://www.amazon.com/Show-Stopper-Breakneck-Generation-Microsoft/dp/0029356717/

Highly recommended.

Lynn

[Lynn McGuire]

The true speedup was moving the graphics device into ring 0. And the
cause of many crashes due to buggy video device drivers.

Lynn

[Ned Latham]

Way to go, M$!

[Ian Collins]

On 10/12/2019 10:50, Ned Latham wrote:
> Scott Lurndal wrote:
>> Ned Latham writes:
>>> Scott Lurndal wrote:
>>>>
>>>> NT3.51 and NT4.0 (Win2k) both contained portions of Windows 3.1 in the
>>>> so-called 'Windows on Windows' subsystem.
>>>
>>> IOW, a partial emulator?
>>
>> WoW used the intel vm86 mode to execute pure win3.1 code.
>
> Amazing. I cannot fathom why anyone would want backwards compatibility
> with such a dud.

Games.

--
Ian.

[Ned Latham]

That's pathetic. (No wonder they called it WoW.)

[David Brown]

That is either blatant snobbery, or you are seriously out of touch with
the technological world.

Games are not the only use for old software and emulation, but they are
a very substantial part of it.

[Ned Latham]

David Brown wrote:
> Ned Latham wrote:
> > Ian Collins wrote:
> > > Ned Latham wrote:
> > > > Scott Lurndal wrote:
> > > > > Ned Latham writes:
> > > > > > Scott Lurndal wrote:
> > > > > > >
> > > > > > > NT3.51 and NT4.0 (Win2k) both contained portions of Windows
> > > > > > > 3.1 in the so-called 'Windows on Windows' subsystem.
> > > > > >
> > > > > > IOW, a partial emulator?
> > > > >
> > > > > WoW used the intel vm86 mode to execute pure win3.1 code.
> > > >
> > > > Amazing. I cannot fathom why anyone would want backwards compatibility
> > > > with such a dud.
> > >
> > > Games.
> >
> > That's pathetic. (No wonder they called it WoW.)
>
> That is either blatant snobbery, or you are seriously out of touch with
> the technological world.

Or maybe I'm just aware of how much better modern games are than the games
of those days were.

> Games are not the only use for old software and emulation, but they are
> a very substantial part of it.

Your reply implied that in this case they are the whole of it. As a reason
for going to the bother of installing a win3.1 emulator, that's pathetic.

[David Brown]

That was for NT 4.0, IIRC. For NT 3.51, graphics drivers were outside
the kernel privilege ring, which meant ring switches for all access by
the graphics drivers and a significantly slower graphics system than Win
3.x on the same hardware. Since a major use of NT was as a workstation
for CAD and other graphics intensive work, this was a definite problem.
Putting the graphics drivers into the closer ring gave a big speed
boost. The risk of total system crashes due to buggy graphics drivers
was a minor problem - there is relatively little benefit in having the
kernel remain alive while the crashed gui restarts, compared to simply
restarting the whole machine.

[David Brown]

On 10/12/2019 10:58, Ned Latham wrote:
> David Brown wrote:
>> Ned Latham wrote:
>>> Ian Collins wrote:
>>>> Ned Latham wrote:
>>>>> Scott Lurndal wrote:
>>>>>> Ned Latham writes:
>>>>>>> Scott Lurndal wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> NT3.51 and NT4.0 (Win2k) both contained portions of Windows
>>>>>>>> 3.1 in the so-called 'Windows on Windows' subsystem.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> IOW, a partial emulator?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> WoW used the intel vm86 mode to execute pure win3.1 code.
>>>>>
>>>>> Amazing. I cannot fathom why anyone would want backwards compatibility
>>>>> with such a dud.
>>>>
>>>> Games.
>>>
>>> That's pathetic. (No wonder they called it WoW.)
>>
>> That is either blatant snobbery, or you are seriously out of touch with
>> the technological world.
>
> Or maybe I'm just aware of how much better modern games are than the games
> of those days were.
>

There are different opinions on that - people vary significantly on the
kind of game they like. You don't get many new players of old games,
but old players can often keep their old games for quite a while - long
after they have changed to newer versions of other software. And WoW
comes from the early NT days - the main consumer OS was 16-bit Windows
(with gradually increasing 32-bit proportions) until Windows XP in 2001.

>> Games are not the only use for old software and emulation, but they are
>> a very substantial part of it.
>
> Your reply implied that in this case they are the whole of it. As a reason
> for going to the bother of installing a win3.1 emulator, that's pathetic.
>

That comment implies you have mixed up posters in this thread.

But yes, I expect that playing old games is a fairly common reason (but
certainly not the only reason) for installing a Win 3.1 emulator on a
newer system. That does not mean it is something many people will do in
absolute terms.

And no, it is not pathetic. You don't get to judge people's preferences
as "pathetic" just because they have a favourite game that was written
long ago. That is definitely snobbery.

[Ned Latham]

I thought about reasons for bothering to create a win3.1 emulator; it
occurs to me that there would have been aq lot of corporate migration
from 3.1 to NT.

> > > Games are not the only use for old software and emulation, but they are
> > > a very substantial part of it.
> >
> > Your reply implied that in this case they are the whole of it. As a reason
> > for going to the bother of installing a win3.1 emulator, that's pathetic.
>
> That comment implies you have mixed up posters in this thread.

You're right. It was Ian Collins.

> But yes, I expect that playing old games is a fairly common reason (but
> certainly not the only reason) for installing a Win 3.1 emulator on a
> newer system. That does not mean it is something many people will do in
> absolute terms.
>
> And no, it is not pathetic. You don't get to judge people's preferences
> as "pathetic" just because they have a favourite game that was written
> long ago. That is definitely snobbery.

Don't put words in my mouth. Especially when *my* words are still here, in
this post, giving the lie to your crap.

[bol...@nowhere.co.uk]

On Mon, 09 Dec 2019 11:39:13 -0600
Ned Latham <nedl...@woden.valhalla.oz> wrote:
>Scott Lurndal wrote:
>> Ned Latham writes:
>> > rep_movsd wrote:
>> > >
>> > > MS did it before - remember the Singularity OS, Sing# and Spec# ?
>> > >
>> > > MS keeps trying many things, but there is still Windows 3.1 code in
>> > > Windows 10
>> >
>> > I very much doubt that. Windows 3.1 is a M$ kludge. Windows 10 is
>> > descended from Windows NT, which was written by DEC.
>>
>> Windows NT was written by Microsoft, led by former DEC engineer
>> (Dave Cutler).
>
>It was written by a team hired from DEC led by Dave Cutler. Some members
>of the M$ OS 2 team joined them. Note that DEC had control and use of NT
>until well after delivery. Though it was written *for* M$, it took coding
>far beyond the quality and capabilities that are the usual M$ fare.

Are you talking about NT here or some reliable and fast OS that MS never
released? Win NT was a blue screening, slow joke of an OS and frankly I'd have
expected better from people who worked on VMS.

[bol...@nowhere.co.uk]

On Tue, 10 Dec 2019 11:09:12 +0100
David Brown <david...@hesbynett.no> wrote:
>On 09/12/2019 23:35, Lynn McGuire wrote:
>> The true speedup was moving the graphics device into ring 0.  And the
>> cause of many crashes due to buggy video device drivers.
>>
>

>was a minor problem - there is relatively little benefit in having the
>kernel remain alive while the crashed gui restarts, compared to simply
>restarting the whole machine.

Clearly you're not familiar with the operational concept of a "Server" - ie you
don't kill the backend just because the ooo-shiny! at the front has gone down.
But then neither is or was Microsoft so you're made for each other.

[Bart]

IIRC didn't the original NT (3.5?) boot up with a blue screen anyway?

But the 'blue-screen' was just how MS chose to report detected system
errors. I'm sure other OSes could also crash, but just didn't do so with
a blue display. (Android might just become unresponsive, or the display
goes crazy. Or just goes completely dead.)

MS Windows was also a little unusual as it ran on consumer hardware that
could be assembled from assorted third party components: motherboard,
graphics, controllers, which came with their own third party drivers. It
didn't have as much control as, say, Apple.

As to its speed, yes these days Windows is a monstrous bloated mess of
an OS. I use it but just try and ignore most of it as much as I can.
(Eg. right-click on some file icon, and you can count to 10 - or
sometimes even longer - before it shows a menu. WTH is it up to?)

[David Brown]

Sure, that was critical at the time - lots of software was written for
16-bit Windows, and people needed to run it on 32-bit NT. And it became
steadily less relevant over time. You are unlikely to find many people
wanting to run 16-bit Windows software /now/ in a corporate setting. If
you look at tools aimed at running old software, there is a strong focus
on games - because that is a big use-case.

>
>>>> Games are not the only use for old software and emulation, but they are
>>>> a very substantial part of it.
>>>
>>> Your reply implied that in this case they are the whole of it. As a reason
>>> for going to the bother of installing a win3.1 emulator, that's pathetic.
>>
>> That comment implies you have mixed up posters in this thread.
>
> You're right. It was Ian Collins.
>
>> But yes, I expect that playing old games is a fairly common reason (but
>> certainly not the only reason) for installing a Win 3.1 emulator on a
>> newer system. That does not mean it is something many people will do in
>> absolute terms.
>>
>> And no, it is not pathetic. You don't get to judge people's preferences
>> as "pathetic" just because they have a favourite game that was written
>> long ago. That is definitely snobbery.
>
> Don't put words in my mouth. Especially when *my* words are still here, in
> this post, giving the lie to your crap.
>

You have twice said that it is "pathetic" that people would use Win 3.1
support software to run games. How is that to be interpreted other than
as saying it is "pathetic" that people would want to run old games?

You can answer that if you like, but I think this thread branch is going
nowhere and is clearly off-topic.

[David Brown]

Windows NT was not initially targeted as a server OS, but as a
workstation OS. No one used Windows seriously for servers at the time -
it was Unix or Netware. By the time Windows NT was a common choice for
a server, the integration of the graphics drivers in the kernel layer
was a done deal. And yes, it was a potential problem that a crashed gui
meant a crashed server - but on servers you don't usually install high
performance, high risk graphics drivers.

(Don't misunderstand me - I think having the risky third-party driver
code running at kernel level is a bad idea from the reliability
viewpoint, and a terrible idea on a server. And when I set up a server,
I do it using an OS that doesn't have a gui at all.)

[Paavo Helde]

On 10.12.2019 15:54, Bart wrote:
> As to its speed, yes these days Windows is a monstrous bloated mess of
> an OS. I use it but just try and ignore most of it as much as I can.
> (Eg. right-click on some file icon, and you can count to 10 - or
> sometimes even longer - before it shows a menu. WTH is it up to?)

FYI: these are shell extensions installed by various third-party
software packages and which maybe want to add items in that context
menu. Windows itself is not much to blame here (apart of not
automatically deactivating slow or non-functional extensions).

Things become especially interesting (i.e. boring) when some shell
extension wants to access a network drive which is not there any more.
But 10 s seems a bit fast for this.

In principle you can clean shell extensions up yourself in the registry.
Probably there are also tools for that.

[bol...@nowhere.co.uk]

On Tue, 10 Dec 2019 15:55:31 +0100

David Brown <david...@hesbynett.no> wrote:
>On 10/12/2019 14:17, bol...@nowhere.co.uk wrote:
>> On Tue, 10 Dec 2019 11:09:12 +0100
>> David Brown <david...@hesbynett.no> wrote:
>>> On 09/12/2019 23:35, Lynn McGuire wrote:
>>>> The true speedup was moving the graphics device into ring 0.  And the
>>>> cause of many crashes due to buggy video device drivers.
>>>>
>>>
>>> was a minor problem - there is relatively little benefit in having the
>>> kernel remain alive while the crashed gui restarts, compared to simply
>>> restarting the whole machine.
>>
>> Clearly you're not familiar with the operational concept of a "Server" - ie
>you
>> don't kill the backend just because the ooo-shiny! at the front has gone
>down.
>> But then neither is or was Microsoft so you're made for each other.
>>
>
>Windows NT was not initially targeted as a server OS, but as a
>workstation OS. No one used Windows seriously for servers at the time -
>it was Unix or Netware. By the time Windows NT was a common choice for
>a server, the integration of the graphics drivers in the kernel layer

MS were marketing it as a server from version 3.51 IIRC. Sure, no one took
it seriously, but if that is the best the team from DEC could do then clearly
VMS was a good OS despite them working on it, not because of them. Presumably
the main VMS core was written before they came along. And in that vein lets
hope Linux can survive the mess that Poettering is currently trying to make of
it.

>was a done deal. And yes, it was a potential problem that a crashed gui
>meant a crashed server - but on servers you don't usually install high
>performance, high risk graphics drivers.

MS command line was such a useless waste of time (and still is really even with
Powershell) that there was little choice but to have some sort of graphics
driver to drive the GUI.

[bol...@nowhere.co.uk]

On Tue, 10 Dec 2019 17:22:20 +0200
Paavo Helde <myfir...@osa.pri.ee> wrote:
>On 10.12.2019 15:54, Bart wrote:
>> As to its speed, yes these days Windows is a monstrous bloated mess of
>> an OS. I use it but just try and ignore most of it as much as I can.
>> (Eg. right-click on some file icon, and you can count to 10 - or
>> sometimes even longer - before it shows a menu. WTH is it up to?)
>
>FYI: these are shell extensions installed by various third-party
>software packages and which maybe want to add items in that context
>menu. Windows itself is not much to blame here (apart of not
>automatically deactivating slow or non-functional extensions).

Allow 3rd party extensions to highjack a fundamental piece of OS shell
functionality is beyond f*cking stupid, but then thats MS for you.

[Ned Latham]

boltar wrote:

NT, yes. As I said in another post, on taking delivery, M$ set about
"improving" it. It was fine on DEC hardware.

[Ned Latham]

David Brown wrote:
> Ned Latham wrote:
> > David Brown wrote:
> > > Ned Latham wrote:

----snip----

> > > > Your reply implied that in this case they are the whole of it. As a reason
> > > > for going to the bother of installing a win3.1 emulator, that's pathetic.
> > >
> > > That comment implies you have mixed up posters in this thread.
> >
> > You're right. It was Ian Collins.
> >
> > > But yes, I expect that playing old games is a fairly common reason (but
> > > certainly not the only reason) for installing a Win 3.1 emulator on a
> > > newer system. That does not mean it is something many people will do in
> > > absolute terms.
> > >
> > > And no, it is not pathetic. You don't get to judge people's preferences
> > > as "pathetic" just because they have a favourite game that was written
> > > long ago. That is definitely snobbery.
> >
> > Don't put words in my mouth. Especially when *my* words are still here, in
> > this post, giving the lie to your crap.
>
> You have twice said that it is "pathetic" that people would use Win 3.1
> support software to run games. How is that to be interpreted other than
> as saying it is "pathetic" that people would want to run old games?

I said, and I quote, "[the] reply indicated that in this case [games] are
the whole of it. AS A REASON FOR GOING TO THE BOTHER OF INSTALLING A
WIN3.1 EMULATOR, that's pathetic".

[Cholo Lennon]

Autoruns from MS Sysinternals helps with that awful problem.

--
Cholo Lennon
Bs.As.
ARG

[Keith Thompson]

Ned Latham <nedl...@woden.valhalla.oz> writes:
> David Brown wrote:
[...]

>> You have twice said that it is "pathetic" that people would use Win 3.1
>> support software to run games. How is that to be interpreted other than
>> as saying it is "pathetic" that people would want to run old games?
>
> I said, and I quote, "[the] reply indicated that in this case [games] are
> the whole of it. AS A REASON FOR GOING TO THE BOTHER OF INSTALLING A
> WIN3.1 EMULATOR, that's pathetic".

And this has what exactly to do with C++, the topic of this newsgroup?

--
Keith Thompson (The_Other_Keith) ks...@mib.org <http://www.ghoti.net/~kst>
Working, but not speaking, for Philips Healthcare
void Void(void) { Void(); } /* The recursive call of the void */

[Ned Latham]

Keith Thompson wrote:

> Ned Latham writes:
> > David Brown wrote:
> [...]
> > > You have twice said that it is "pathetic" that people would use Win 3.1
> > > support software to run games. How is that to be interpreted other than
> > > as saying it is "pathetic" that people would want to run old games?
> >
> > I said, and I quote, "[the] reply indicated that in this case [games] are
> > the whole of it. AS A REASON FOR GOING TO THE BOTHER OF INSTALLING A
> > WIN3.1 EMULATOR, that's pathetic".
>
> And this has what exactly to do with C++, the topic of this newsgroup?

Shit happens.

[Vir Campestris]

On 10/12/2019 13:12, bol...@nowhere.co.uk wrote:

> Are you talking about NT here or some reliable and fast OS that MS never
> released? Win NT was a blue screening, slow joke of an OS and frankly I'd have
> expected better from people who worked on VMS.

After using Windows 3.1 (the 16 bit one) Windows NT 3.1 was a breath of
fresh air. It just kept running. It really didn't crash (except when our
HW was broken, and since we were developing it that did happen).

3.51 was if anything better.

AIUI NT4 picked up the 9x GUI. Certainly it was not as stable as the
earlier ones.

Andy

[Daniel]

On Monday, December 2, 2019 at 6:39:31 PM UTC-5, Öö Tiib wrote:
>
> Google has Go and Apple has Swift so perhaps Microsoft
> also wants to have some garbage-free programming language.

As opposed to a garbage-full programming language like C++? :-) Or did you
mean as opposed to a language with GC? But Go has GC.

> The syntax of Rust is not that different from Swift or Go.

The memory ownership models are different. Go has GC. Swift has
reference counting. Rust has affine types.

> However the compiler feels like impressive effort of limiting
> ways to express nonsense. Actually what does it matter how
> easy it is to write some incoherent and buggy programs? There
> are no such "gotcha!" bear traps in Rust like C++ is full of
> and so it perhaps suits novices better than C++.

I'd be interested to know what you think about Rust's affine types. I'm currently on chapter 4 of The Rust Programming Language, The Stack and the Heap, and have some mental resistance to "_don't_ do as the ints do".

Daniel

[bol...@nowhere.co.uk]

On Tue, 10 Dec 2019 21:09:24 +0000
Vir Campestris <vir.cam...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>On 10/12/2019 13:12, bol...@nowhere.co.uk wrote:
>> Are you talking about NT here or some reliable and fast OS that MS never
>> released? Win NT was a blue screening, slow joke of an OS and frankly I'd
>have
>> expected better from people who worked on VMS.
>
>After using Windows 3.1 (the 16 bit one) Windows NT 3.1 was a breath of
>fresh air. It just kept running. It really didn't crash (except when our
>HW was broken, and since we were developing it that did happen).

Perhaps I was spoilt - I went straight from 8 bit at home to unix at university
so I was used to using HP-UX and Solaris at 21. Then I was introduced to
Windows. It was like going from a Ferrari to a Lada and NT didn't nothing to
dispel that imagine. It crashed, it had to rebooted once a week as it had
a serious memory leak issues and it was a slow as a dog. If that was a breath
of fresh air then god knows what you were breathing beforehand.

[James Kuyper]

On Wednesday, December 11, 2019 at 4:50:06 AM UTC-5, bol...@nowhere.co.uk wrote:
...

> Perhaps I was spoilt - I went straight from 8 bit at home to unix at university
> so I was used to using HP-UX and Solaris at 21. Then I was introduced to
> Windows. It was like going from a Ferrari to a Lada and NT didn't nothing to
> dispel that imagine. It crashed, it had to rebooted once a week as it had
> a serious memory leak issues and it was a slow as a dog. If that was a breath
> of fresh air then god knows what you were breathing beforehand.

As I remember it, NT almost never crashed, but I'm not sure what I meant
by "almost never" when I formed that memory. Windows 3.1 typically
crashed several times per day for me, so a weekly crash might have felt
like "almost never" by comparison.

Like you, my experience with Unix pre-dated my experience with either
DOS or Windows, and those Unix systems were very reliable. However,
those systems were mainframes being maintained by professional
sysadmins; I would not have dreamed of expecting the same reliability
from a desktop machine that I maintained myself.

[bol...@nowhere.co.uk]

On Wed, 11 Dec 2019 03:13:44 -0800 (PST)
James Kuyper <james...@alumni.caltech.edu> wrote:
>On Wednesday, December 11, 2019 at 4:50:06 AM UTC-5, bol...@nowhere.co.uk
>wrote:

>....

The basic reliability of an OS should be independant of how well or otherwise
its administered so longs as patches are installed.

[Fred. Zwarts]

Op 11.dec..2019 om 12:20 schreef bol...@nowhere.co.uk:

The reliability also depends on the amount of (third-party, cheap)
hardware used in those systems. Those early Unix systems supported far
less hardware. There is a reason why Microsoft later introduced
Microsoft certified drivers.
I was used to VMS systems. I remembered how in that time the same
argument was used against Unix and pro VMS.
When later-on Linux started to supported the same hardware as Windows, I
also saw "kernel panic" very often. (But it was not blue. :-)

[Bart]

On 11/12/2019 09:49, bol...@nowhere.co.uk wrote:
> On Tue, 10 Dec 2019 21:09:24 +0000
> Vir Campestris <vir.cam...@invalid.invalid> wrote:
>> On 10/12/2019 13:12, bol...@nowhere.co.uk wrote:
>>> Are you talking about NT here or some reliable and fast OS that MS never
>>> released? Win NT was a blue screening, slow joke of an OS and frankly I'd
>> have
>>> expected better from people who worked on VMS.
>>
>> After using Windows 3.1 (the 16 bit one) Windows NT 3.1 was a breath of
>> fresh air. It just kept running. It really didn't crash (except when our
>> HW was broken, and since we were developing it that did happen).
>
> Perhaps I was spoilt - I went straight from 8 bit at home to unix at university
> so I was used to using HP-UX and Solaris at 21. Then I was introduced to
> Windows. It was like going from a Ferrari to a Lada

My experience was the opposite. I didn't think a great deal of Windows,
which to my mind simply got in the way (compared to my previously using
MS/PC-DOS for ten years where you had direct control of a lot more of
the hardware).

But trying out Linux every few years, Windows always looked and felt
solidly professional by comparison. On Windows, things just worked
(mouse, USB, printers, internet, display), whereas on Linux during the
90s, these rarely worked properly, or worked badly, or had to be coaxed
into working via configuration files.

And even when the display worked, it looked dreadful, like a cheap 80s
home computer. That's probably not surprising considering Windows was
backed by a multi-billion dollar company, and supported by multitudinous
hardware vendors, while Linux was hacked together by amateurs in their
spare time, it seemed. (And with dozens of different distributions.)

> so I was used to using HP-UX and Solaris at 21.

If you were writing software for use by the general public, then Windows
machines were obtainable anywhere at any PC store, all ready to go.

That was a huge advantage compared to having software relying on obscure
workstations (where did you even buy such a thing).

I suspect such machines were more expensive too.

[bol...@nowhere.co.uk]

On Wed, 11 Dec 2019 12:11:33 +0000
Bart <b...@freeuk.com> wrote:
>On 11/12/2019 09:49, bol...@nowhere.co.uk wrote:
>> On Tue, 10 Dec 2019 21:09:24 +0000

>> Perhaps I was spoilt - I went straight from 8 bit at home to unix at
>university
>> so I was used to using HP-UX and Solaris at 21. Then I was introduced to
>> Windows. It was like going from a Ferrari to a Lada
>
>My experience was the opposite. I didn't think a great deal of Windows,
>which to my mind simply got in the way (compared to my previously using
>MS/PC-DOS for ten years where you had direct control of a lot more of
>the hardware).
>
>But trying out Linux every few years, Windows always looked and felt
>solidly professional by comparison. On Windows, things just worked

Well everyones experience is different I suppose. I've run Linux since kernel
version 1.1 and most things worked fine apart from printers which have always
been its weak point. The Windows PCs I was using at work however couldn't last
more than 2 or 3 days without a reboot if they didn't first crash anyway.

>And even when the display worked, it looked dreadful, like a cheap 80s
>home computer. That's probably not surprising considering Windows was

Not in my experience. Yes, X could be a pig to get working but once it was
it was fine. In fact I had full motion video running in linux on a 486 back in
the 90s. Something Windows wadsn't even close to achieving except with special
3rd party hardware.

[David Brown]

There is a /huge/ difference between HP-UX, Solaris, Sun-OS, AIX, etc.,
and Linux - especially at the time in question. Linux these days is
strongly supported by big companies in all senses (big companies use it,
big companies supply it, big companies provide support, big companies
make sure their hardware and software works with Linux, etc.). But in
the days of Win 3.1 and NT 3.x, Linux was very much a "do it yourself"
system for people who were willing to get their hands dirty.

The big unixes were a different world, however. You did not buy a
random "PC compatible" and try to run Solaris on it - you got a Solaris
workstation, such as SPARCStation, and used that. Often, you used it on
a network - a serious Ethernet network with a proper server, not a
little "LANtastic" setup. The hardware was a world ahead of the PC
world in terms of quality, speed, and features - and a different world
in terms of price.

I went from mainly 8-bit systems (Spectrum and BBC micro), to SunOS then
Solaris at university, and then to Windows 3.1. I have to agree with
Boltar - going to Windows after Solaris was huge leap backwards in both
hardware and software. The SPARCStations had vastly better screens and
graphics than anything you got in the PC world - and if you needed more
screen space, you logged into the computer next to you and treated its
screen as an extension to your own. (The network transparency of X
might make it poor for 3D graphics and videos, but was excellent for
that kind of thing.) Virtual desktops were standard in the *nix world
over 30 years ago, and only with Windows 10 is there a limited version
in the Windows world.

The Windows world has never been close to the Unix world in terms of
quality, solidity, or professionalism.

>
> And even when the display worked, it looked dreadful, like a cheap 80s
> home computer. That's probably not surprising considering Windows was
> backed by a multi-billion dollar company, and supported by multitudinous
> hardware vendors, while Linux was hacked together by amateurs in their
> spare time, it seemed. (And with dozens of different distributions.)
>
>> so I was used to using HP-UX and Solaris at 21.
>
> If you were writing software for use by the general public, then Windows
> machines were obtainable anywhere at any PC store, all ready to go.
>
> That was a huge advantage compared to having software relying on obscure
> workstations (where did you even buy such a thing).
>
> I suspect such machines were more expensive too.
>

Of course they were more expensive. They were worth more, and did more.
But they were used by companies (and universities) willing to pay for
their tools, rather than those that wanted the cheapest machines they
could get and didn't care how much time and effort was wasted with
reboots, reinstalls, crashes, crappy hardware, crappy software, etc., -
or by companies that knew workstations were better but couldn't afford
them, or when they needed hardware or software that only existed in the
Windows world. Anyone with the choice would have gone for a Unix
workstation over Windows.

[bol...@nowhere.co.uk]

On Wed, 11 Dec 2019 16:01:32 +0100
David Brown <david...@hesbynett.no> wrote:
>hardware and software. The SPARCStations had vastly better screens and
>graphics than anything you got in the PC world - and if you needed more
>screen space, you logged into the computer next to you and treated its
>screen as an extension to your own. (The network transparency of X
>might make it poor for 3D graphics and videos, but was excellent for
>that kind of thing.) Virtual desktops were standard in the *nix world
>over 30 years ago, and only with Windows 10 is there a limited version
>in the Windows world.

Indeed. Such a shame though that Sun management had such myopia and didn't
see both the PC and Apple creaping up on them as they treaded water with their
hardware in the 00s, but instead kept charging silly money for their
workstations instead of pitching the price at Apple levels where they could
have shared the professional graphics market. Instead Apple (and to a lesser
extent Windows) ate their lunch, ironically with their own version of Unix in
the end. Plus they didn't really see Linux coming in the server space until
it was too late.

[Öö Tiib]

On Tuesday, 10 December 2019 23:56:09 UTC+2, Daniel wrote:
> On Monday, December 2, 2019 at 6:39:31 PM UTC-5, Öö Tiib wrote:
> >
> > Google has Go and Apple has Swift so perhaps Microsoft
> > also wants to have some garbage-free programming language.
>
> As opposed to a garbage-full programming language like C++? :-) Or did you
> mean as opposed to a language with GC? But Go has GC.

Yes I meant as opposed to historically garbage-filled C++ and failed
attempts of reducing that garbage like Java and C#.
C++ is useful only by having "The Bible Of Its Usage In This
Project". A sketch of it:
<https://isocpp.github.io/CppCoreGuidelines/CppCoreGuidelines>.
Basically one without tens of millions dollars to throw into project
has to limit allowable C++ constructs in it to bare minimum right
from the very start or to do it in next iteration after failing
the first attempt.

> > The syntax of Rust is not that different from Swift or Go.
>
> The memory ownership models are different. Go has GC. Swift has
> reference counting. Rust has affine types.

The GC does not worry me, "garbage collection" is just unfortunate
name to great idea of automated memory recycling. Its only issue is
that it makes programmers to feel safe while it totally failed to
automate recycling of all other, far more valuable resources than
memory. Plus it does not favor data layouts that are naturally
suitable for parallel processing.

Other nice GC languages besides Go are JavaSript (non-tameable wild)
and Kotlin (sponsored by Jetbrains and Google).

>
> > However the compiler feels like impressive effort of limiting
> > ways to express nonsense. Actually what does it matter how
> > easy it is to write some incoherent and buggy programs? There
> > are no such "gotcha!" bear traps in Rust like C++ is full of
> > and so it perhaps suits novices better than C++.
>
> I'd be interested to know what you think about Rust's affine types. I'm currently on chapter 4 of The Rust Programming Language, The Stack and the Heap, and have some mental resistance to "_don't_ do as the ints do".

I think of those as of policy that only owner has right to use
and ownership is move-only. I basically follow same policy in
all other languages (but it is easiest to automate in C++).
I basically allow shared ownership of immutable objects as
the only exception.

[Chris M. Thomasson]

On 12/11/2019 3:13 AM, James Kuyper wrote:
> On Wednesday, December 11, 2019 at 4:50:06 AM UTC-5, bol...@nowhere.co.uk wrote:
> ...
>> Perhaps I was spoilt - I went straight from 8 bit at home to unix at university
>> so I was used to using HP-UX and Solaris at 21. Then I was introduced to
>> Windows. It was like going from a Ferrari to a Lada and NT didn't nothing to
>> dispel that imagine. It crashed, it had to rebooted once a week as it had
>> a serious memory leak issues and it was a slow as a dog. If that was a breath
>> of fresh air then god knows what you were breathing beforehand.
>
> As I remember it, NT almost never crashed,

One time I created a little program that would try to crash NT using a
build up of non-pageable memory. It took mem from the non-paged pool,
iirc. This can be done using IOCP. Each pending request is in
non-pageable memory. The result was a crashed system. This can happen in
a server using IOCP, its a real problem indeed. So, during server setup,
my test program tried to stress the system to certain breaking point(s),
then setup a configuration file that had the limits hardcoded.

[James Kuyper]

On 12/11/19 6:20 AM, bol...@nowhere.co.uk wrote:
> On Wed, 11 Dec 2019 03:13:44 -0800 (PST)
> James Kuyper <james...@alumni.caltech.edu> wrote:

...

>> Like you, my experience with Unix pre-dated my experience with either
>> DOS or Windows, and those Unix systems were very reliable. However,
>> those systems were mainframes being maintained by professional
>> sysadmins; I would not have dreamed of expecting the same reliability
>>from a desktop machine that I maintained myself.
>
> The basic reliability of an OS should be independant of how well or otherwise
> its administered so longs as patches are installed.

I'm curious - how in the world do you expect an OS to be designed to
make it's reliability independent of the level of competence of the SA
maintaining it? About the only way I can see to do that is to give the
SA very few options for doing anything that he might do wrong, and a
system so-designed doesn't need any system administrators (for instance,
most of the electronics that run in my refrigerator don't need any
system administration). On powerful general purpose machines, that's
simply not an option - SAs have enormous power, and correspondingly
enormous capabilities for ruining a system if they're not sure what
they're doing.

[bol...@nowhere.co.uk]

On Sun, 15 Dec 2019 23:27:11 -0500
James Kuyper <james...@alumni.caltech.edu> wrote:
>On 12/11/19 6:20 AM, bol...@nowhere.co.uk wrote:
>> On Wed, 11 Dec 2019 03:13:44 -0800 (PST)
>> James Kuyper <james...@alumni.caltech.edu> wrote:

>....

>>> Like you, my experience with Unix pre-dated my experience with either
>>> DOS or Windows, and those Unix systems were very reliable. However,
>>> those systems were mainframes being maintained by professional
>>> sysadmins; I would not have dreamed of expecting the same reliability
>>>from a desktop machine that I maintained myself.
>>
>> The basic reliability of an OS should be independant of how well or otherwise
>
>> its administered so longs as patches are installed.
>
>I'm curious - how in the world do you expect an OS to be designed to
>make it's reliability independent of the level of competence of the SA
>maintaining it? About the only way I can see to do that is to give the

I expect the kernel not to crash and statically linked core system utilities
(not a concept Windows is familiar with) that are currently running should
remain running even if a sys admin deletes something he shouldn't have or
messes up a library upgrade or rm -rf /.