Re: [9fans] code complexity

["david presotto" <presotto@closedmind.org>]

Simplicity pretty much goes out the window when
you try to keep up with the world since the world
isn't simple.  Try to build a browser that supports
just enough to get along with the pages that are
out there and you still end up with something 
bigger than Plan 9 no matter how hard you work
at it.

The question however is not the total size of the code
but the complexity of the internal interactions.  If
one added as many device drivers to Plan 9 as one
has in Windows or Linux, our code base would be
truly huge also.  However, the complexity of any
instance of plan 9 wouldn't be anygreater because the
vast body of device drivers do not interact with
each other and any particular instance will have a
small selection of them in use.  They all follow
pretty much the same API talking to the kernel
and to programs and that API is not very large.

It would be nice if such an approach could be
applied to a browser.  I haven't seen the inards
of Opera, so perhaps it has.  It definitely isn't
true of netscape or exploder.

One of the problems of uncontrolled excess is
that API's tend to get very wide to cover all possible
corners.  (The same is true of  in other arenas,
hence the current cross over cars that are SUV's,
compacts, luxury cars, and trucks all built into
one.)  The wider the API, the larger the number
of interactions with that piece of code and everything
that interfaces with it.  We've tried to keep API's
small to avoid that, i.e., put in what's absolutely
necessary and drag our heels on everything else.
However, that means saying no to a lot of
people with real problems, people we ignore
in order to keep our playland comprehensible.
To that extent Linux is much truer to the ideals
of an open market than Plan 9 or BSD.  If
something it wanted by enough people, it appears
no matter what it does to the complexity or
supportability of the code.

This leads back into the DLL discussion because,
once someone has DLL's, they tend to feel that
the size of the API no longer matters, everyone
will be sharing the code bloat so why bother
keeping things small.  There's nothing inherent in
the existence of DLL's that causes this, it's just
human nature.