Talk:Separation of mechanism and policy

X11

A major example of this principle is X Window system, see: X_Window_System#Principles, last item. --Glasreiniger (talk) 13:53, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I first heard this "mantra" (zen koan?) in 1988, in the context of X10.4, shortly before X11 came out. Its not really correct to discuss this pattern, without discussing what actually happened with X11. See for example, http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?PolicyAndMechanism for a brief overview. Note also that in the early 1990's the 3D wars raged, and PHIGS lost, and OpenGL won, and it was often said that the reason was that PHIGS provided too much policy, which made it impossible to implement on modern hardware in a performant way. OpenGL exposed the hardware (i.e. exposed the mechanism), whereas PHIGS was a collection of policies about what you could and could not do with the hardware, hiding the hardware and preventing you from doing what you wanted. (we're seeing this again, with the latest DirectX 12 vs opengl wars, except this time, opengl is kind-of-ish on the wrong side.) 67.198.37.16 (talk) 16:41, 26 August 2015 (UTC)