this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2024
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Linux
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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End user shouldn't care what PL the software is written in. Their advantages and disadvantages are meaningful for developers only.
PL can have a large impact on features, bugs, bug reports, troubleshooting, performance and documentation. Particularly when dev resources are limited.
It’s hard to see how this opinion holds any water.
Rust is a great choice for a shell built as an interactive shell that doesn’t have to be core to the OS. Over C++ this also makes development more accessible to young programmers.
Except they affect the end result.
While I agree, most people shouldn't have to be concerned with it, you can't deny the resource impacts of various languages, libraries and frameworks, like compare the memory usage of Discord or Teams with those of FOSS chat applications, and you'll notice those two consistently eating much more memory. You can also compare compute speeds of a higher level language like Python vs lower level languages like Rust and you'll find that Rust is quite a bit faster (though generally takes more dev time). So yes, users shouldn't have to be concerned with involved languages, but if you're running something on a low-resource device, such as a Raspberry Pi, those little details can make all the difference.