[Haskell-cafe] Re: Hoogle and Network.Socket

[John Lato]

On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 3:49 PM, Jonathan Cast
<jonathanccast at fastmail.fm> wrote:
> On Wed, 2009-02-25 at 10:23 +0000, John Lato wrote:
>> 4.  Cross-platform concerns are something that responsible developers
>> need to consider, just like localization and i18n.  I.e., why
>> *shouldn't* you think of that?
>
> Sorry, wtf?  I have a *responsibility* to design software for a
> miserably poorly-designed God-awful platform I'd have to pay *extra*
> for, and even then couldn't get source to or *fix* if I found a bug?
> No.  You don't control me, to the best of my knowledge you haven't done
> squat for me, and by trying to force me to develop to *that* platform
> you are actively attempting to harm me.
>

I'm not trying to force you (or anyone else) to do anything.  All I'm
saying is that, as a developer, you should consider that your
unix-dependent software will never reach over 80% of the computer
users available.  Now, I don't know anything about what sort of
software you write, maybe your market segment is big iron so you've
already made a decision to ignore Windows.  Maybe you hate Windows so
much you want to deprive its users of your code.  I honestly don't
care.  As a former ASP.Net developer, I can assure you I have no love
for MS.

By responsible developer, I meant accountable for decisions made
during development.  It's fine to say you don't know if your code
doesn't run on Windows because you've made a decision to not support
it (or actively work against it, as the case may be).  It's not fine
to say you don't know because you never thought about it.

Cheers,
John Lato