Comment by gjvc
7 years ago
... this deserves a supplementary question: what will get us beyond UNIX to the next platform, not just the next paystub?
7 years ago
... this deserves a supplementary question: what will get us beyond UNIX to the next platform, not just the next paystub?
Maybe something like Android, OS X/iOS, ChromeOS, UWP, Fuchsia, Unikernels, Language runtimes on Hypervisors.
And since I sense the question coming, Android, OS X/iOS, ChromeOS might use an UNIXy kernel, but its exposure surface to applications is so small, that it can be easily exchange for something else, it is just a matter of cost.
Which brings us to the next point, given the commodity of free UNIX-like OSes, maybe only an hardware reboot like Quantum computers will actually do it.
> And since I sense the question coming, Android, OS X/iOS, ChromeOS might use an UNIXy kernel, but its exposure surface to applications is so small, that it can be easily exchange for something else, it is just a matter of cost.
Android, macOS, and iOS expose almost the full set of POSIX to the programmer. Now, you may argue that it goes mostly unused, but it is there, and there are people using it.
Android does not, use at your own peril as it is not part of the official APIs and will get your app terminated if you use unauthorized APIs.
Using libc is not the same as POSIX.
https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/stable_apis
https://developer.android.com/about/versions/nougat/android-...
https://android-developers.googleblog.com/2016/06/android-ch...
As for macOS, and iOS, if Apple removed POSIX how many apps written in Objective-C and Swift (not UNIX cli tools ported from Linux) would actually be affected?
Very few, because those written in C and C++ ported from other platforms are most likely making use of ANSI C and C++ standards.