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From: "Paul Edwards" <mutazilah@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: encapsulating directory operations
Date: Mon, 26 May 2025 09:01:54 +1000
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
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"Keith Thompson" <Keith.S.Thompson+u@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:875xhojp5n.fsf@nosuchdomain.example.com...

> And if you want to talk
> about coercing or bribing members of the C committee or any similar
> antisocial behaviors

I'm not really antisocial. They are theoretical possibilities
that can't be ruled out. No matter how absurd you believe
them to be - and I would tentatively agree - but I have
been burnt too many times to pretend that I can predict
the future.

In more practical terms, it is as per the original article I
posted from Jeff. He - like me - believes that the IT
industry is a case of the inmates are running the asylum.

I sense an opportunity - possibly a commercial opportunity -
here.

The existing software is too complicated to maintain, and
systems are failing. Have you seen the movie "Idiocracy"?
I believe it is already happening.

PDOS is basically as simple as I can make it. That also
means it has the most chance of being maintainable.

The supporting infrastructure has one thing that is too
complicated to maintain - gcc.

That can currently be treated as a black box. cc64 is
in the same boat.

We have been attempting for years/decades to stand
up a replacement, but it hasn't happened yet.

At some point I may be able to run bank software,
where my bank software is on a fully understood by
normal programmers  - not a few freaks that are dying
out - system, and so some bank that uses my software
is more competitive than other banks that use the
latest 2048-bit system with 5000 Tbps fiber optic
connections, that is permanently broken at the software
side - or even if it is on the hardware side - no-one
can detect that, because they can't prove - or even
report - it - via software - to the hardware engineers
so that they can correct it.

I've seen that first hand. On a POSIX system, we were
getting intermittent hangs on the software side. And I
think we didn't even know whether it was on the disk
or network side.

I told them this is not something for us application
programmers to solve - we need systems programming
support, who will then liase with the OS, 3rd party
software, and hardware manufacturers as required.

"what's a system programmer?".

(that's a term familiar on MVS)

It was a complete clown show. Again - I'm not alone.
Jeff in the original link expressed it very nicely.

I think it was solved when multiple bits of third party
software were downgraded.

As far as I know, the problem was never isolated and
reported to a vendor.

Certainly whenever Windows freezes on me, I don't
report it to Microsoft.

You can report PDOS bugs to me easily though, and
at least to date, they are investigated without charge.

You can sort of do that with any bugs in MVS (z/OS)
too.

That's the only competitor to PDOS I'm aware of,
and indeed, I would encourage you to use my
competitor, rather than PDOS, for now.

I am already aware that your (non-specific reader)
mileage varies, but you're welcome to repeat that
anyway. And it will be ignored, as usual. I already
know we (non-specific) have different goals too.

BFN. Paul.