Developers love building on platforms. Saying there shouldn't be platforms defies reality.

Edit: Looking up the quote it seems to just be the person being pedantic in how they define operating systems.

wtetzner 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Given his work on Smalltalk, I suspect he means that he prefers the line between language runtime and operating system to be erased, and they be the same thing.

I disagree though. While there are benefits to that approach, I feel like language innovation would be stifled to a certain degree.

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convolvatron 4 hours ago | parent [-]

that seems backwards to me. one of the primary constraints in language development is the OS api. programs that don't interact with the world are increasingly less interesting, and you really have to work hard and be clever to change the file and its semantics, the socket, or the thread. these things have sharp edges and tend to be leaky.

	▲	wtetzner an hour ago \| parent [-]
		> that seems backwards to me I'm not sure I completely understand which part you find backwards. Do you mean merging language runtimes and the OS is a bad idea, or that you think merging them would lead to more innovation? I can see an argument for both (in terms of innovation), but being able to run only one language environment on a computer at a given time would make it much harder and heavy weight to use new languages. Or at the very least, new language runtimes.

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raverbashing 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Edit: Looking up the quote it seems to just be the person being pedantic in how they define operating systems.

What a surprise

Pragmatism beats idealism in the real world