

Why does Posix have recursive mutexes? Because of a dare.  - signa11
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.programming.threads/msg/d835f2f6ef8aed99?hl=en&pli=1

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hythloday
_First, implementation of efficient and reliable threaded code revolves around
one simple and basic principle: follow your design. That implies, of course,
that you have a design, and that you understand it. A correct and well
understood design does not require recursive mutexes_

This is quite a startling position for a library author: don't supply
convenient constructs that could be misused if they aren't absolutely
necessary. Without any desire to be snarky about the hard work that went into
POSIX, I'm glad as a discipline we've move on in the last 20 years.

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telent
Compare and contrast with the Rails attr_accessible kerfuffle of last week,
where it was generally held by (I think) the majority of commenters that the
library should not have provided this convenient feature or at least should
have made it more difficult to enable.

I'm right there with this "startling" (some would say "opinionated") position.
And so is my C library, which complains at me every time I compile a program
using getwd()

("my" as in the one I have installed here. I am making no ownership claim)

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tptacek
Huh? attr_accessible is the whitelist feature; the argument was that it should
have been non-optional.

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telent
Indeed it is as you say. "attr_accessible kerfuffle" was my (apparently, and
quite bizarrely, considered inflammatory) shorthand to refer to the whole
episode. I'd edit the post to clarify, but it won't let me do that any more

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emilis_info
Dear HNers: please stop linking to pages that require visitors to log-in.

Dear Google: please stop requiring authentication to read public google group
messages.

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EdiX
I'm reading it and I'm not logged in. I think I remember this is a bug in
google groups, it will ask you to log in if you have an old google cookie, it
used to happen to me too a year ago, try to delete your google cookies.

