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0 pointsEvanAnderson2y ago0 comments

I think my unreasonable expectations for applications to be scriptable today comes from my experience with the Amiga.

I didn't know the words "interprocess communication" when I first encountered Arexx and Aress ports. I came from a mostly MS-DOS and Windows 3.1 background. I hadn't used much multitasking software up to that point.

Once I grokked why Arexx ports could be cool and useful I had a terrible time trying to explain them to non-"Amiga people". I remember a friend asking to be shown the "Arexx port" on my Amiga 1200 trying to explain it was a software construct and not a physical hardware device. I'm not sure if knowing the words "interprocess communication" would have helped, but it couldn't have hurt.

I feel like I've spent a significant part of my sysadmin career making dodgy hacks to bolt-on IPC functionality to applications that don't properly expose any. Fortunately it feels like it happens a lot less today than, say, 25 years ago.

0 comments

vidarh2y ago

Yeah, on Linux even when there are dbus ports (systems and Gnome have plenty) they're relatively poorly known and/or not much less of a pain to use than a "proper" API.

If you need a schema or binding, it's not good enough. If you have to hunt for docs, it's not good enough.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 pointsEvanAnderson2y ago0 comments

I think my unreasonable expectations for applications to be scriptable today comes from my experience with the Amiga.

0 comments

vidarh2y ago

Yeah, on Linux even when there are dbus ports (systems and Gnome have plenty) they're relatively poorly known and/or not much less of a pain to use than a "proper" API.

If you need a schema or binding, it's not good enough. If you have to hunt for docs, it's not good enough.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse