Re: [Lennart Poettering] Re: A few observations about systemd
Iustin Pop <iustin <at> debian.org> writes:
> In my experience, programs written with portability in mind are much
> more resilient to breakage, and thus over time they survive bit-rot much
> better. Whenever I see a program that is explicitly non-portable, I tend
> to discount it in favour of portable alternatives, because it means:
I believe it's true that over some "general" sample of programs portable ones
have higher quality. However the main reason for that is that skilled
programmers are more likely to be aware of portability concerns and not just try
changing code until the find the first version that runs on their machine. If
you have a programmer of given skill then I doubt whether he tries to create a
portable program or not has all that much effect on the quality.
I think there is more and better evidence available to evaluate the quality of
systemd code and the skill of its authors than correlation with portability (and
I'm pretty sure they'd have the skill to write portable code).
> So, while you have said very clearly in this thread "portability should
> be amongst the last considerations", understand that not everyone shares
> your point of view.
I don't think that accurately represents my view. Most of the C code I've
written has been quite portable (standard-conforming and using POSIX functions
only, though in most cases without trying to work around any flaws of specific
compilers). I just don't think portability would be of such overriding concern
that it would be THE attribute to evaluate code quality by, or that going for
maximum portability would be the universal right answer in every case.
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