Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

It's a side effect of abstraction. Even a language like C makes it extremely hard to figure out the binary interfaces of the compiled program. There's no way to know for sure the effects any given change will create in the output.

The best binary interface I know is the Linux kernel system call interface. It is stable and clearly documented. It's so good I think compilers should add support for the calling convention. I wish every single library was like this.

https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man2/syscall.2.html




"It's a side effect of abstraction."

We have an entire language-on-top-of-a-language in C++ pre-processor, but we could not figure out something to specify to the compiler what we want in an ABI?

I think an abstraction is when a tool takes care of something for you, this situation is just neglect.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: