If you put users’ home directories on NFS-mounted drives (one abstraction), and your users create .forward files to forward all their email somewhere else (another abstraction), and the NFS server goes down while new email is arriving, the messages will not be forwarded because the .forward file will not be found. The leak in the abstraction actually caused a few messages to be dropped on the floor.
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/11/11/the-law-of-leaky-abstractions/
#abstraction #leak
image from wikimedia
very good text by Gentoo developer Patrick Lauer about systemd.
http://gentooexperimental.org/~patrick/weblog/archives/2013-10.html#e2013-10-29T13_39_32.txt
#gnu #linux #programming #centralization #control #decentralization #gentoo #systemd #openrc #patrick-lauer #funtoo #dbus #logind #cgroups #kernel #unix #operating-systems #api #abstraction #freedom
inventing #abstraction #moma
http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2012/inventingabstraction/?page=connections
http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html #schceme #abstraction #recursion #interpreters #modules #sicp