Re: [9fans] Inferno on microcontrollers

["Brian L. Stuart" <blstuart@bellsouth.net>]

On Sun, 12/31/17, Bakul Shah <bakul@bitblocks.com> wrote:

> I don't think we can assume a more popular plan9 would have
> met the fate of Linux. What bothers (some of) us is not that
> Linux is mainstream but that it is far too complicated and
> kitchensinky.

I'd like to think that there can be widespread use without the
bloat and absurdities.  However, I suspect that overly complicated
and kitchensinky is necessary for mainstream.  From what I've
observed over the last 40 years, even among those who are
technically educated, the subset who will choose well-designed
over packed-with-unused-features is sadly small.  Seeing how
many "modern" programmers immediately reach for the obscene
JavaScript "frameworks" for everything they do is enough to
drive one to drink.

I will admit that the cause and effect might also work in the other
direction.  There does seem to be a very real case to be made
that as a system becomes more popular, it attracts more people
who lack the judgement and the good taste to say 'no' to features
that don't fit well.

Personally, I think that popularity and bloat form a positive
feedback loop that stalls out once the complexity budget is
exhausted.  From then on, all future releases merely rearrange
the bugs.  Certainly, I'd love to be proved wrong.  But I can't
think of any examples where the mainstream user and developer
communities were able to resist the latest "ooh shiny."  Just
look how long it's taken for the community to realize that flash
was a bad idea.

BLS