[sldev] Re: SLDev Digest, Vol 2, Issue 44

[Argent Stonecutter]

> Step ONE is write code (like Dale). Then you can worry about isolating
> it into a plugin once you know what API you need, then you can  
> generate
> bindings for Mono and Javascript and Lua and Python and Java and  
> Fortran
> and whatever the hell other crack you feel like smoking.

That's how you end up with really really bad APIs. That's how you end  
up with Winsock, where a file and a BSD-style socket on Windows use  
different calls to read and write. That's how you end up with  
Multics, where you had to use a DIFFERENT API to open a file  
depending on whether it was 256 kilobytes or more, because the  
original API assumed you could map the whole file into memory. And  
that's why (to get back to 'The Art of UNIX Programming') UNIX  
*isn't* just a baby version of Multics.

The thing that's REALLY stupid is that Linden Labs has an  
encapsulation API already, as mentioned in the reply to my message  
about how to encapsulate parameters to plugins, and nobody's talking  
about how to use that.