Until it becomes difficult to work with and is perceived by someone as slowing them down, at which point someone will come up with the bright idea of typing the io channel to a suitable type for layering an untyped stream over.
Re:The Ethos Operating System
by JonSolworth on Monday April 14, 2014 @02:59PM
(#7588075)
This is the reason why we believe the Tao--the way--is essential to an OS. It is the programming paradigms and use, combined with OS semantics, which is the genius of UNIX.
Where does the IO typing come from? Is it some programming language? The website says that it uses C for kernel and Go for user space, neither of which are known for having advanced typing systems.
Re:The Ethos Operating System
by andrewflnr on Monday April 14, 2014 @01:49PM
(#7587657)
I think they're talking about OS-provided interprocess IO, which is mostly language-independent.
OpenBSD has un-typed IO. Typed IO gives you guarantees that un-typed IO can never give you. For starters, a number that doesn't validate properly as an Int, for instance, will simply not be able to pass through, potentially stopping if not Heartbleed then bugs like Heartbleed.
Don't you think companies and other interests would like stronger guarantees, especially when they're running applications that protect information that hackers and foreign governments and other companies would love to see?