From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: <200910061900.ab25356@salmon.maths.tcd.ie> References: <544954.87352.qm@web83908.mail.sp1.yahoo.com> <200910061900.ab25356@salmon.maths.tcd.ie> Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 11:27:41 -0700 Message-ID: <13426df10910061127m7331b58dqba8abf01a0fc11f8@mail.gmail.com> From: ron minnich To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@9fans.net> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Subject: Re: [9fans] mishandling empty lists - let's fix it Topicbox-Message-UUID: 81eac608-ead5-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 one last note on this because it is kind of interesting. Consistency is good. Sometimes it goes too far. The RCA computer OS guys decided that CR and LF were not really command delimiters, that rather ETX made the most sense. So to end a command you had to remember to type ^C. Consistent, totally. Conformant with the intent of ASCII, probably. Kind of interesting, easy to embed CR and LF in your commands. And utterly horrible to use. There are many examples of this kind on computing, where consistency was taken just a bit too far and led into a nasty thicket. I think that in limited situations, inconsistency is a good thing. And, conversely, one can take consistency as an absolute good, and run off the road. Some people argue that Plan 9 has run off the road for just that reason. Many of us would beg to disagree. That's where the judgement lies, I guess. ron