[Info-vax] Variable declarations, was: Re: improving EDT

[John Reagan]

On Wednesday, November 30, 2016 at 8:40:10 AM UTC-5, Scott Dorsey wrote:
> =?UTF-8?Q?Arne_Vajh=c3=b8j?=  <> wrote:
> >On 11/29/2016 11:32 AM, Scott Dorsey wrote:
> >> He means an OS designed for the widest possible number of applications for
> >> the widest possible number of users.
> >>
> >> The consequence of that design is that it becomes impossible to actually
> >> fix design bugs but only issue patches to deal with specific consequences
> >> of them.  The end result of this is a constant flow of patches and an
> >> unstable platform.
> >
> >I don't see general purpose platforms like Unix, VMS, Linux, Windows etc.
> >as being unstable.
> 
> Have you ever run any of them?  Windows is the worst, but many of the Linux
> distributions are just as bad.  Every week the OS is slightly different.
> You can't count on the base platform remaining the same.
> 

True!  For all the people who chuckle at Microsoft's "Patch Tuesday", my home Ubuntu system seems to have an update about once a week.  Some of them are rolling out new functionality which isn't "unstable" but as Scott says, you no longer can know for sure exactly what features the system supports.  Some of them are security updates.  From a gut feel, there are just as many security issues being fixed on Ubuntu as on my Windows boxes.