Re: OT: Windows (Was: Re: Open Source does not mean easily

In article <vlg4mb$1hi6d$1@dont-email.me>,  <Muttley@DastardlyHQ.org> wrote:

On Sun, 5 Jan 2025 21:09:55 -0000 (UTC)
cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) wibbled:

In article <vlecm0$1465i$1@dont-email.me>,  <Muttley@dastardlyhq.com> wrote:

On Sat, 4 Jan 2025 22:13:05 -0000 (UTC)
Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> gabbled:

On Sat, 04 Jan 2025 08:31:05 -0300, Salvador Mirzo wrote:
>

For instance, is there any Windows software that
handles a TCP connection in an accept-fork-exec fashion?

>
Almost certainly not. Because process creation is an expensive operation
on Windows.
>
Windows NT was masterminded by Dave Cutler, who was previously responsible
for the VMS OS at his previous employer, DEC. He was a Unix-hater, part of
a bunch of them at DEC. They would instinctively turn away from Unix ways
of doing things, like forking multiple processes. So the systems they
created did not encourage such techniques.

>
Presumably VMS relied heavily on multithreading then like Windows or was a
process expected to everything itself sequentially?

>
Many system services on VMS are asynchronous, and the system
architecture provides a mechanisms to signal completion; ASTs,
mailboxes, etc.  Thus, many programs (not all) on VMS are
written in a callback/closure style.

>
I imagine that could become complicated very quickly and presumably relies
on the OS providing the signalling mechanisms for everything you might
want to do - eg waiting for a socket connection (or whatever the decnet
equivalent was).

It's a fairly common way to structure software even today.  As I
said, the OS provides asychronous notification mechanisms (ASTs)
and IPC (mailboxes etc) for signaling operation completion.

- Dan C.