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by chrismonsanto 4592 days ago
Most of your argument is that each OS uses a different IO multiplexer. Lightweight abstractions over these multiplexers have been around for decades: feel free to use libuv if you want a fairly 'modern' one.

That the contour of the API differs slightly means nothing. An example of true incompatibility would be, say, supporting UNIX-style mounts on Windows. If you wanted to support that cross-platform, either you or a library would have to directly implement the semantics of UNIX mounts, as opposed to just making a shim over what the OS already provides.
2 comments
FooBarWidget 4592 days ago
Whether lightweight abstractions exist is moot. The point of the grandparent was that sockets are portable. If you're going to use an extra library besides pure sockets anyway then why is that any better compared to using ZMQ?
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nilliams 4592 days ago
> That the contour of the API differs slightly means nothing.

What? It means everything if you have to learn socket intricacies at different levels of abstraction on a per-platform basis. That is not what most people mean when they say an API or library is portable.

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