Don't they make each application you use run with it's own user?
Yes. I guess that's what the grandparent means. I don't find it abnormal, it's a very good practice - create user accounts for public-facing processes and give them as minimal rights as possible. Still, the possibility to somehow break out and gain root exists.
It is unusual in that usually applications meant to be consumed locally by the owner of the device are not considered "public-facing". It is something usually done with servers or daemons, not web browsers and text editors.
Yeah, I figured that is what was being referred to...it didn't strike me as abnormal though, but I guess it is. In practice this hasn't caused me any problems while developing on Android.
Anyone else negatively impacted by this?
Didn't intend to imply anything negative by "abnormal". It just isn't the "traditional" way to use processes for a user-facing, semi-desktop system. But given Android's special-purpose, single-user nature, it is a perfectly logical system (and quite clever, really). It just isn't the way users are used e.g. on my Fedora laptop.