Re: [9fans] re: how people learn things (was architectures)

[Lucio De Re <lucio@proxima.alt.za>]

On Fri, Jul 13, 2001 at 11:15:59AM +0200, Laura Creighton wrote:
>
> Actually, there is somebody out here using Plan 9 to not program who has
> wanted a user interface change.  Kenji was disatisfied with Plan 9's
> way to view maps of planets.
>
Take five :-(  So many concepts, so little ability to put them
across!

Plan 9 has amongst the most flexible interfaces available.  That
they are similar, yet sometimes contradictory shows no fear of
heading in the wrong direction and then backtracking.

In fact, Plan 9 is just a large interface experiment, looked from
that perspective: Rio, Sam, Acme, Page, the Plumber, processes as
filesystems, the CPU server, you name it.

It will be a while still before somebody actually freezes the
_presentation_ interface so that one can invest in developing
applications.  Whether it will be the Gnome by any other name or
a totally novel approach, it has to stand still long enough for
programmers to take aim, something presently more true of Inferno
than of Plan 9.

Discussion in this mailing list has always petered off without
conclusion, so perhaps we need to look at Plan 9 as strictly a
bootstrapper for further development, a tool capable of much greater
refinement, a rough diamond waiting for the right cutter to bring
its potential to the outside.  Until that explosion, my guess is
that it must continue to develop with the programmer (and the
documenter, and other members of the bootstrapping team) in the
cross-hairs.  And in my opinion that is the interface we should
concentrate on.

++L