in reply to (OT) Fixing OSX's biggest weakness as a dev platform

Win32 developers can live with such, why not you?
  • Comment on Re: (OT) Fixing OSX's biggest weakness as a dev platform

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Re^2: (OT) Fixing OSX's biggest weakness as a dev platform
by wazoox (Prior) on Apr 10, 2008 at 16:17 UTC

    Because OS X is of Unix kin, and should behave like all Unixen do. Windows on the other hand, is from CP/M kin and may well behave in all sort of ways without anybody even noticing, as long as 8.3 uppercase works :) From Dilbert:

    Unix Bearded guy: Kid, here's 50 cents, go get yourself a PC.

      The objection, nonetheless, can be sustained. Not every Unix filesystem is case-insensitive; Perl certainly doesn't care. If, when faced with an established system that “does not do as you prefer,” you fundamentally redefine that such a system in such a way that will break thousands of core applications for that system ... that's just a little too much hubris.

        I swear I addressed that concern in my original post, which is why I discussed partitioning the bootdisk into a standard partition for the system and a non-standard case-sensitive partition.

        And, for the record, Perl -does- care. It just doesn't force you to worry about it if all developers don't use case-sensitivity in their package names. But, that's an open hole. For example, the current plan of adding a 'x' (in lowercase) for extensions. DBIx, CGIx, etc. What happens if you have a company called CGIX and your module namespace is CGIX:: ?


        My criteria for good software:
        1. Does it work?
        2. Can someone else come in, make a change, and be reasonably certain no bugs were introduced?

      The OS X is not just a Unix kin. It's also a Macintosh ... or at least it was meant to be a Macintosh from the outside with BSD under the hood. And Macs used to be case insensitive as far as I remember. And I bet you'd surprise the heck out of the Mac oldtimers if you suddenly switched to a case sensitive filesystem.

        *sighs* Which is what I addressed in my OP and why I discussed partitioning and what I had to go through in order to partition my bootdisk.

        My criteria for good software:
        1. Does it work?
        2. Can someone else come in, make a change, and be reasonably certain no bugs were introduced?