Re: [9fans] Rant (was Re: Plan9 and Ada95?)

[Steve Kilbane <steve@whitecrow.demon.co.uk>]

I don't see tools like Perl or Python bringing more people into Plan 9,
particularly when faced with the mass of Windows users. Plan 9 is
about doing things a different way, with the implied assumption that the
difference arises from an attempt to improve things. If potential users
need their comfy feature set to attract them, then they're the wrong user
set. Plan 9 is implicitly targeted at people who are willing to try changing
how they work.

This is also one reason why concepts from Plan 9 (which includes manner of
thought as well as software models) has less impact on the outside world:
both the *nix worlds and the Windows worlds are significantly larger user
bases that are more into evolutionary change than revolutionary change.
Windows XP has only just dropped DOS; Linux and GNU are basically copies of
30-year-old systems. Such large user bases are inherently resistant to
change.

This is also one reason why gcc is the crufty behemoth it is, and ?c
isn't: gcc had to accept and deal with problems on many systems, while
?c could assume they'd go away, by being fixed elsewhere. As forsyth says,
portable compilers aren't inherently that nasty, but gcc itself has become
a large system, dealing with many scenarios, and thus encouraging evolution
rather than revolution. That's why it's a platypus.

steve