Igor Stasenko wrote:
The core issue about having FFI or Alien available in the standard system is that then people start coding against it. One you go down that road, it is hard to reverse that and make a system "sandboxable".
sound like: a) isolationists tactics b) teaching others how to write good code
i really don't like when people deciding upfront what is good or bad and don't providing any choice how to change this. This is against the spirit of smalltalk. Use java then, with its sealed classes :)
I think you are missing the point. An example: in order to get the MIME type of a file on a Mac you can use a certain system call to do that. There two choices: you write or extend a plugin (sandbox safe, but a lot of work) or you use FFI/Alien (not sandbox safe, but quick to do and maintain). If FFI is not default, then people tend to do the extra work to work with a plugin. If it is available, people will avoid that extra work and I think that is absolutely legitimate and has nothing to do with good or bad code. Michael