The "loop and a half"

[Chris Angelico]

On Sun, Oct 8, 2017 at 10:22 PM, Paul Moore <p.f.moore at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8 October 2017 at 11:36, bartc <bc at freeuk.com> wrote:
>> Even with things like building applications (eg. trying to build CPython
>> from sources), they are designed from the ground up to be inextricably
>> linked to Linux scripts, utilities, makefiles, installation schemes, or
>> designed to work with the Linux-centric gcc C compiler. Then when they don't
>> work as well anywhere else, it's because Linux is so much better! No, it's
>> because they were non-portably designed around Linux and therefore designed
>> NOT to work well anywhere else.
>
> When developing scripts, applications, or any form of code, I use good
> ideas from anywhere, as I doubt that I have the monopoly on knowing
> the perfect way to write code. Some of those good ideas come from
> Unix-based systems. That's not "because Linux is so much better", it's
> because someone other than me had a good idea, and I acknowledge the
> fact.

It's also worth noting that "Linux" and "Unix" are not synonymous, and
that a lot of these ideas have come from BSD, or some other OS. In
fact, a good few of the ideas being pooh-poohed in this thread have
been around longer than Linux has. The idea that most tools should
work with stdin and stdout (while sending errors to stderr) dates back
*at least* to the earliest Unix, and quite possibly earlier. So
they're not "because Linux is so much better" - they're "because Unix
has worked this way for longer than Windows or Linux or Mac OS has
been around". And by "worked", I don't just mean that this is how it
is - I also mean that it *works*, it is useful, it is a viable
solution to real-world problems.

ChrisA