Jasen Betts wrote in a message to Roy J. Tellason:

 JB> Hi Roy.

 JB> 25-Aug-03 04:34:24, Roy J. Tellason wrote to Jasen Betts

 RJT> Makefiles are something I haven't had to deal with yet,  or at
 RJT> least composing them.  I've looked in a couple to see what some
 RJT> of the options are,  and that's about it so far

 JB> yeah, it's like  C is three different languages,  C itself, the pre
 JB> processor (# commands, macro0s) , and the makefile.

I never had that much trouble with the preprocessor...

Mostly that's just text substitution.

Sometimes the code on different platforms can be *so* different as to
almost look like a different language.  I know that the stuff I started
messing around with back in CP/M days just wasn't all that complicated
(though I do remember one guy who wrote a book filled with incredibly
tortuous convoluted constructions using macros and assembly language...) 
The dos stuff tended to include platform-specific stuff to do things like
find out what kind of video card we were working with,  etc. which doesn't
seem to be a concern elsewhere.

Linux,  on the other hand...

I just got this scanner.  And dug out an AHA-1540B card to interface it
with.  And I'm wondering,  do I need to enable the BIOS or not?  I'm not
planning to boot from the card,  just drive the scanner with it.  And I
know that Linux doesn't use the MB bios once it boots.  So I'm thinking
maybe not.  Yet in one of the HOWTO files this specific driver (aha1542 or
aha154x) is specified as you do need it,   or probing will fail.  Do I need
it if I'm explicit on the command line?  Who knows?

So I go toward the source,  thinking maybe there's an answer in there.  And
I can't figure it out,  have *no* idea what they're doing with most of that
code...

It almost _is_ like a different language!

I guess if I weren't talking about kernel code,  things might be a little
different,  but I suspect that for me to start getting seriously into
programming that platform it's going to take some radical shifts in my
point of view,  at least.

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