From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: <04fd01c10a0c$c5b7b1c0$c0b7c6d4@SOMA> From: "Boyd Roberts" To: <9fans@cse.psu.edu> References: <200107110655.HAA01693@localhost.localdomain> Subject: Re: [9fans] sam vs acme MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Wed, 11 Jul 2001 15:24:09 +0200 Topicbox-Message-UUID: c5549b8c-eac9-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 From: "Steve Kilbane" > and Boyd wrote: > > [ stuff about sidewinder missiles ] > > I'm amazed. I really am. i think you miss my point. simple stuff works. complex stuff doesn't and if it does it's only because there's an army out there to nurse it along. bentley quotes gorden bell [Digital h/w designer]: the cheapest, fastest and most reliable components are those that aren't there. missing components don't make mistakes, are secure and don't need testing, documentation or maintenence. > I don't think that's quite true. wily's RPC isn't nearly as nice to use > as Plan 9's writing to files, but I presume that Plan 9's library for > driving 9P isn't as nice to use as writing to the files > either; if it was, that'd be the functionality you'd see from the shell. i was not targeting wily or acme or sam. i was thinking of more complex stuff. perl or C++ are probably good examples of things that started out relatively simple (albeit perl was such a mess from the beginning) and then evolved into these dreadfully complex, horrible messes. i was trying to express my distaste for people who design things that are insanely complex and step back and think: gee, i'm clever to have build this incredibly complex thing no, that _thing_ will bite you further down the track and it was foolish to build it.