++ and I'd already read that. My point is less that I'd have picked differently and more that how much effort a minor platform takes is perhaps as important as how many users it has.
Starting with a cleaner, simpler, more easily managed core could make managing ports around the edges of the code simpler. Starting with an example POSIX machine (and sticking to mostly POSIX), be that GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, Darwin, or whatever and then adding thin, isolated compatibility layers around the file handling and signals on not-so-POSIX systems goes a long way toward portability. One or two platforms is plenty for a first model, but choosing not to support low-hanging fruit beyond that just because the fruit isn't very popular seems silly. Now, if there's a platform that absolutely nobody will step up to support, that's an issue for that platform.
