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Re: The subsetting has begun

• To: "Alaric B. Snell" <alaric@a...>
• Subject: Re: The subsetting has begun
• From: John Cowan <cowan@m...>
• Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 06:09:25 -0500 (EST)
• Cc: Tim Bray <tbray@t...>, Joshua Allen <joshuaa@m...>, Joe English <jenglish@f...>, XML Dev <xml-dev@l...>
• In-reply-to: <E18nzBi-00019B-00@c...> from "Alaric B. Snell"at "Feb 26, 2003 10:53:22 am"

Alaric B. Snell scripsit:

> Likewise, with TCP/IP, I use the sockets API. 

On our last iteration, I pointed out that the sockets API is the poster child
of API-centric programming: nobody even dreams of doing networking until
it is implemented.

What I didn't point out then was the ad hoc and non-standard nature of the
API.  Until very recent years, there was nobody who wanted to standardize
it -- the IETF "didn't do APIs", and the other standards bodies didn't
seem to be interested.  Nevertheless, it remained quite standard on all
Unix-like systems and many others, and even WinSock adhered fairly closely
-- over-closely, in fact -- to what originally appeared in 4.2BSD.  There
has never been a compelling reason to re-engineer it.

-- 
John Cowan           http://www.ccil.org/~cowan              cowan@c...
To say that Bilbo's breath was taken away is no description at all.  There
are no words left to express his staggerment, since Men changed the language
that they learned of elves in the days when all the world was wonderful.
        --_The Hobbit_

• Follow-Ups:
  • Re: The subsetting has begun
    • From: Gavin Thomas Nicol <gtn@r...>

• References:
  • Re: The subsetting has begun
    • From: "Alaric B. Snell" <alaric@a...>

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