Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[John Stalker]

Well that was a very long discussion, and a fairly pointless one
for the following reasons:
- It doesn't matter whether Plan X is a good idea or not, unless
  someone is actually going to try to implement it.  That is not
  at all clear at this point.
- Most of the discussion seems not to have been about the topic,
  but about each individual's personal pet peeves.
- This is all being discussed in the wrong place.  If there is
  a problem which Plan X could solve then it is that almost no
  one uses Plan 9.  To caricature, it would provide private
  namespaces to people who don't like pastel colours and
  bunnies.  But those people aren't on this list, so this is
  the wrong place to guage their level of interest.
--
John Stalker
School of Mathematics
Trinity College Dublin
tel +353 1 896 1983
fax +353 1 896 2282

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[Tim Newsham]

> Unless you have something constructive to say, rather than make up some
> fantastic problem in what I say, I'm done here.

Yay?

Tim Newsham | www.thenewsh.com/~newsham | thenewsh.blogspot.com

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[erik quanstrom]

> Anyone ever peek at one of the Oberon to C compliers?  Or maybe the
> Oxford stuff?
>
> http://spivey.oriel.ox.ac.uk/corner/Oxford_Oberon-2_compiler

why not build a native compiler?  translating to c seems such
a waste.  oberon (especially wirth's current iteration) is tiny.

unfortunately, i don't think either approach would be more
useful than a c compiler for the oberon system.   too bad.  i'd
still give it a big thumbs up as a student project.

- erik

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[Jack Johnson]

On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 8:48 AM, Federico G. Benavento
<benavento@gmail.com> wrote:
> p2c (pascal 2 c)

Anyone ever peek at one of the Oberon to C compliers?  Or maybe the
Oxford stuff?

http://spivey.oriel.ox.ac.uk/corner/Oxford_Oberon-2_compiler

-Jack

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[Jeff Sickel]

On Apr 18, 2010, at 3:58 PM, C H Forsyth wrote:

>> Just to clarify, you do mean the TV show?
> 
> yes, yes i do.

Please end this thread.  Soon you'll have someone re-implementing the 'google "write in C"' lyrics and posting yet another video to you tube.

Or better yet, the reciting all of Ed Wood's work with Theremin accompaniment.

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[C H Forsyth]

>Just to clarify, you do mean the TV show?

yes, yes i do.

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[Corey]

On Friday 16 April 2010 16:58:38 andrey mirtchovski wrote:
> TL;DR

On Friday 16 April 2010 21:20:15 Federico G. Benavento wrote:
> too long for me to read, could you summarize in 3 lines?

On Saturday 17 April 2010 10:06:35 Iruata Souza wrote:
> still too long.


I'm not avoiding these requests.

I'm just waiting a bit longer until something sufficiently "summarizable"
emerges from whatever I/O occurs via this thread.


Regards

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[Bakul Shah]

On Sat, 17 Apr 2010 22:35:53 BST C H Forsyth <forsyth@vitanuova.com>  wrote:
> perhaps Plan 9 is just the Black Books of software?

You mean with 9fans playing the role of Bernard Black?  Could
be -- if you squint a bit.... Black Books is an anarchic place,
with piles of books, cartons of old takeouts, an odd jam
sandwich stuck to the ceiling and so on. Not an image one
associates with Plan 9! And Bernard is more Ignatius J.
Reilly than any of the 9fans (that I know of).

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[Federico G. Benavento]

>  scheme
>  ocaml
>  haskell
>  lua
>  limbo
>  linda
>  pforth
>  python
>
tcl
4th
bprolog
p2c (pascal 2 c)
f2c (fortran 2 c)
extra/perl which could be easily updated


-- 
Federico G. Benavento

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[Scott Sullivan]

On 04/17/2010 05:35 PM, C H Forsyth wrote:
> perhaps Plan 9 is just the Black Books of software?
>

Just to clarify, you do mean the TV show?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Books

--
Scott Sullivan

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[C H Forsyth]

perhaps Plan 9 is just the Black Books of software?

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[Bakul Shah]

On Fri, 16 Apr 2010 16:58:00 PDT Corey <corey@bitworthy.net>  wrote:
>
> The Plan 9ers have "successfully" prevented the Plan Xers from "encroaching",
> but it's the Plan Xers who are going to find new and interesting expressions
> of a Plan 9 based operating system, however in order to bootstrap, the Plan
> Xers need the experience and insights of the Plan 9ers... yet there's an
> antagonistic conundrum that prevents the two perspectives from peering.

You are worrying about the wrong things.

If you really believe in your ideas, go ahead, create a plan
9 fork and find time to implement your ideas.  Don't let the
naysayers distract you. If people like what you're doing,
they will follow you.  It's as simple as that. This is how
for instance DragonflyBSD came about.

And by the way, you have not articulated your vision of what
you want "plan X" to be (as opposed to what you don't want it
to be).  What use cases do you have in mind that might be
better served by plan X?  Are they important enough and
different enough to warrant a fork? Then come up with a set
of positive goals and an action plan on achieving that.  Show
that you can achieve a subset on your own and you will get a
far more sympathetic response. This will be far more
satisfying than arguing about "what plan 9 should be".

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[Richard Miller]

> * a stance against alternate programming language paradigms

A few seconds rummaging through /n/sources/contrib turns up:

  scheme
  ocaml
  haskell
  lua
  limbo
  linda
  pforth
  python

All these seem fairly alternate to me.

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[Karljurgen Feuerherm]

Alright. Perhaps we're converging here. Small team is what I was thinking--I agree that as teams get larger they get more unmanageable and tend to produce less focused (and thus less efficient or pristine) results.

This has been a helpful discussion for me in terms of trying to get the gist of the Plan9 ideology.

K
>>> <lucio@proxima.alt.za> 17/04/2010 1:46:47 pm >>>
> I struggle with this. Groups can do things and have honour. And groups often do things without paycheques. I remember a group effort to implement Tiny C for microcomputers in the late 70s... it was a group effort and was plenty honourable...

There will always be exceptions.  Also, eadership can give a group an
identity very similar to individuality and I suspect this merely
confirms the statement you are commenting on.

And then there is the sheer size of groups and the competing interests
within any group, growing as the group grows.

++L

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[Patrick Kelly]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: 9fans-bounces@9fans.net [mailto:9fans-bounces@9fans.net] On Behalf Of lucio@proxima.alt.za
> Sent: Saturday, April 17, 2010 2:02 PM
> To: 9fans@9fans.net
> Subject: Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)
> 
> > You have repetitively ignored the heart of my e-mails, and even ignored chunks of what I've said just to criticize me.
> 
> Sorry, knee-jerk response.  If I disagree with what you say, I'm much more likely to include it and criticise it than to ignore it.  And I see
> little value (to the community) in merely stating that I agree with you on something, as was the case with the first half of your
> message.  So don't shoot from the hip, I do believe that the term "friendly fire" is an oxymoron when a bullet strikes me.

Yeah, this whole thing got a little out of hand.

I was mad, not for the disagreement, but for misinterpreting what was (at least I thought) a clear statement. I tend to get that way; it's a bit of a pain.
At any rate, you are right in saying no good comes from "shooting" you. I need to learn to save ammo for the true trolls ^^.

Sorry about all this.
 
> ++L

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[lucio]

> You have repetitively ignored the heart of my e-mails, and even ignored chunks of what I've said just to criticize me.

Sorry, knee-jerk response.  If I disagree with what you say, I'm much
more likely to include it and criticise it than to ignore it.  And I
see little value (to the community) in merely stating that I agree
with you on something, as was the case with the first half of your
message.  So don't shoot from the hip, I do believe that the term
"friendly fire" is an oxymoron when a bullet strikes me.

++L

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[lucio]

> There will always be exceptions.  Also, eadership can give a group an

Oops, where did the "l" in leadership go?

++L

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[lucio]

> I struggle with this. Groups can do things and have honour. And groups often do things without paycheques. I remember a group effort to implement Tiny C for microcomputers in the late 70s... it was a group effort and was plenty honourable...

There will always be exceptions.  Also, eadership can give a group an
identity very similar to individuality and I suspect this merely
confirms the statement you are commenting on.

And then there is the sheer size of groups and the competing interests
within any group, growing as the group grows.

++L

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[Albert Skye]

> Attempting to [discuss and speculate on different potential expressions
> of Plan 9] here on 9fans continues to be a traditional source
> of agitation and flames, tempered with a healthy dose of shut up and
> code.

As it appears to me, this mailing list does tolerate such discussion, and I find the criticism to be generally useful.

As for action rather than words, indeed. In any case, this discussion (and others) might become more useful by concentrating on illustrating useful ideas, rather than reinforcing perceived problems. So, tell us more of these women.

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[lucio]

> The image this brought to mind was Buddhism. Would Buddhism be better
> if it were infused with Evangelism?  Doubtful.

As a very young Roman Catholic, I was quite taken by evangelism, I
still have embarrassing memories of shedding a tear for a missionary
amongst the lepers contracting leprosy himself.  Today, I fail to see
_any_ reason why a faith principle should even be _allowed_ to
evangelise, nevermind that if it had any value it would be embraced
automatically.

I have the same problem with Plan 9.  If the world wanted to see value
in it, it would look harder than the resistance to popularisation that
has defined Plan 9 development since 1995 when I first encountered it.
By the same token, I don't expect others to provide the services I
would find useful, even when I believe that what I would benefit from
would be of general use to the community.

Most new arrivals here fail to see that simply because Plan 9 isn't
fashionable, there just isn't an infinite number of monkeys generating
an infinite number of programs, some of which may even turn out handy.
I miss some of these exceptional developments myself, but I'm not
prepared to sacrifice the largely disciplined nature of Plan 9 to the
largely undisciplined desires of the bazaar, by whatever name it may
go.  It's also a genie that won't go back in the bottle, and that
ought to be cause to be really careful.

What does get iritating is that yes, one could drop any resistance to
change, but none of the objectives would be attained: Plan 9 would not
be any more popular - Linux is still going to be streets ahead in
popularity; the base of available programs wouldn't grow at any speed,
because we'd still need someone to make the autoconf tools, GCC, G++
and BASH work under Plan 9, and that is no small task, specially if
you include the resistance on the other side to accept Plan 9-oriented
adjustments to their code.

Reality is, Plan 9 is not a better Unix or a better Linux, it is
itself.  If you want something else, feel free to adopt Plan 9 as your
foundation, but don't expect anyone here to follow you.  Some may, but
you can be certain with only the slightest shadow of doubt that no one
here is going to _lead_ you where you think Plan 9 ought to be going.
You'll have to be the path finder in that exercise.

And if you haven't quite understood the implications, basically the
Plan 9 community isn't going to put any effort in making Plan 9 more
palatable to those who miss the features they have grown addicted to
on other platforms: we're not going to do the work you wish done,
consciously or subconsciously, on your behalf.  You know it's too big
a job, we know it's too big a job.  Difference is, we don't want to do
it while you think it may just happen if you can convince us it's for
the greater good.  That's where faith comes in and where logic walks
out.

++L

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[Albert Skye]

> Individual work has a benefit no community work can have; honor. That
> product's success or failure is going to affect the image of who
> created it. When an individual creates a product, it has a desire to
> see it succeed. When a group creates a product, they have a desire to
> get their paychecks.

Human activity is prone to many problems, individually and collectively, and likewise many potentials remain available to each (and both).

Although it may be unusual, it is possible for individuals to cooperate in synergistic union, operating as a metaorganism, as it were. The making of music is one example.

Useful: empathy, communication, cooperation.

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[Jack Johnson]

On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 8:29 PM,  <lucio@proxima.alt.za> wrote:
> very little new is being created, but rather many old things are being
> "improved" upon (regurgitated) in manners that consume more and more
> computing cycles and deliver less and less performance.

I think this is an important observation.

When I saw Rob's presentation on concurrency and message passing in
Newsqueak, the meat of the message that stuck in my brain was hey,
there are easier ways to do a lot of the stuff we're already doing.
When you look at the infrastructure to provide D-Bus vs what D-Bus
actually does, there is a huge opportunity cost to implement D-Bus if
that infrastructure does not already exist.  Conversely, if you wanted
to implement its features from scratch on, let's say, a non-UNIXlike
system with no GCC port, why on earth would anyone import the
infrastructure just for that service?

The shared infrastructure of the GCC-bound OSes do provide certain
heritage and growth benefits to those systems at certain costs.  I
think the Plan 9 community is one of the few development communities
that questions the costs of suggested growth.  It has always struck me
a more deliberate act of change rather than an adaptation to change,
and the pace that it provides also has its own costs and benefits.

Do I like EFL? Absolutely. Are there EFL concepts and techniques that
Plan 9 could benefit from? Probably. Do we need to import the
infrastructure to import EFL to benefit from that mindshare? Probably
not.

I'm naively hoping Go will eventually take us to some future middle
ground where folks can dabble in a shared sandbox of sanity from both
sides of the fence.

-Jack

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[Iruata Souza]

On Sat, Apr 17, 2010 at 3:49 AM, Corey <corey@bitworthy.net> wrote:
> On Friday 16 April 2010 21:29:44 lucio@proxima.alt.za wrote:
>> > Messy, with high levels of noise-to-signal - certainly... but absolutely,
>> > astoundingly productive and in constant motion.
>>
>> In my opinion, most of the output from the Posix developers is trash.
>> It's the equivalent of a cancer, polluting the body with poisons.
>> Somewhere in the mix there will certainly be something of value, but
>> it is well hidden by the bulk of the production.  The few jewels are
>> also corrupted by the manner in which they need to be delivered,
>> namely the autoconf stuff.
>>
>
> Understood.  Though I don't share your opinion quite to the degree that
> you expressed. Additionally, I have no desire to debate subjective
> perspectives of the overall net usefulness of POSIX, let alone autoconf -
> everyone, of course, has their opinions and experiences, favorable or
> otherwise.
>
>> If you consider things more objectively you will also acknowledge that
>> very little new is being created, but rather many old things are being
>> "improved" upon (regurgitated) in manners that consume more and more
>> computing cycles and deliver less and less performance.
>>
>
> Again, I'd prefer to not to debate the ratio of good software vs. trashy
> software, or to debate what's new and useful vs. merely regurgitated and
> worsened. Though it's certainly a perfectly interesting topic.
>
>> Consider further the following: porting GCC/G++ to a new platform
>> rather than Linux is almost inconceivable, porting more and more Linux
>> software to a compiler suite other than GCC/G++ is equally
>> inconceivable.  If you can't see anything wrong with GCC's bloat, the
>> dead end it leads to, there is little reason to argue with you.
>>
>
> Finally, regarding this mention of gcc - the "Plan X" in my mind's eye
> would far prefer LLVM/Clang to gcc, for precisely the reasons you
> point out. (I've been considering the prospect of implementing a
> kencc dialect for the clang c front-end).
>
> (I'm using "Plan X" in the sense I mentioned in the original post - i.e.
> I'm _not_ suggesting that the official releases of Plan 9 proper should
> introduce the platform changes under discussion. "Plan X" means:
> any alternative expression of the Plan 9 operating system. Also, I'm
> using the phrase "my mind's eye", in order to stress that this is all just
> speculative, science-fiction)
>
> Regarding the POSIX situation - a "Plan X" of my mind's eye is not
> concerned with fighting that particular battle.
>
> The basic wild-eyed premise, is that an alternative Plan 9 distribution
> which "features" a native, more "POSIXy" approximation than APE, in
> addition to a native compiler that supported a larger number of languages
> and C dialects than 9c - would lead to a much more broadly comfortable
> environment for a greater number of general developers and users.
>
> The theory, is that the Plan 9 implementations of the following concepts:
>
> * 9P
> * mutable namespaces
> * union directories
> * ubiquitous fileservers
> * transparent distributed services
> * etc
>
> ... are simply - by far - much more important and practical to a greater
> number of people than these other prominent Plan 9  idioms:
>
> * radical frugal simplicity throughout the entire system
> * a stance against POSIX and other standards
> * a stance against alternate programming language paradigms
> * a strong bias towards a particular form of user interaction with the
> system (i.e. acme, rio, etc)
>
>
> Peace
>
>
>
>

still too long.

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[Karljurgen Feuerherm]

I struggle with this. Groups can do things and have honour. And groups often do things without paycheques. I remember a group effort to implement Tiny C for microcomputers in the late 70s... it was a group effort and was plenty honourable...

>>> "Patrick Kelly" <kameo76890@gmail.com> 17/04/2010 10:19:40 am >>>

Individual work has a benefit no community work can have; honor. That product's success or failure is going to affect the image of who created it. When an individual creates a product, it has a desire to see it succeed. When a group creates a product, they have a desire to get their paychecks.

You can be right about the manpower issue. In no way could on man build a bridge, but one man can build efficient software.

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[Jack Johnson]

On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 11:41 PM,  <lucio@proxima.alt.za> wrote:
> Polluting Plan 9 with fashionable toys isn't going to save the
> world, isn't even going to be useful to the existing Plan 9 community,
> so why do you believe it should happen, rather than allow Plan 9 as it
> exists, both as a philosophy and as the implementation of this
> philosophy, to demonstrate that a simpler lifestyle is also
> sufficient?

The image this brought to mind was Buddhism. Would Buddhism be better
if it were infused with Evangelism?  Doubtful.

The next time I say, "Not to engender a flame war," please kick me off
the list, please.

-Jack

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[Patrick Kelly]

> > > You can be right about the manpower issue. In no way could on man build a bridge, but one man can build efficient software.
> >
> > Even here there is room for disagreement.  Do you think a
> > community-designed bridge would be preferable to one designed by a
> > single architect?  The seminal concept of "The Bazaar and the Cathedral" overlooks the disasters the befell cathedrals designed by
> consecutive architects.
> 
> Yes there is, but the disagreement in between what I wrote, and what you read. In the quoted sentence, I was talking about the
> building, or implementation, process. What you then began to talk about was the design process.

Sorry, that got a little more heated than I meant it to be.

> > ++L

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[Patrick Kelly]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: 9fans-bounces@9fans.net [mailto:9fans-bounces@9fans.net] On Behalf Of lucio@proxima.alt.za
> Sent: Saturday, April 17, 2010 12:10 PM
> To: 9fans@9fans.net
> Subject: Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)
> 
> > Yes there is, but the disagreement in between what I wrote, and what you read. In the quoted sentence, I was talking about the
> > building, or implementation, process. What you then began to talk about was the design process.
> 
> Computer programming is much more design than implementation, unless I'm too old to keep up with new ideas and I've missed
> some radical change.  The analogy of the construction of a bridge I believe is closer to the real thing if one considers the design rather
> than the implementation.  Ergo...

Never said it wasn't. But you insisted on finding a part of what I said that you could troll, and began to troll.
You have repetitively ignored the heart of my e-mails, and even ignored chunks of what I've said just to criticize me.

I discussed design, and you ignored it. When I brought up implementation, you considered it as design.

Unless you have something constructive to say, rather than make up some fantastic problem in what I say, I'm done here.
 
> ++L

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[lucio]

> Yes there is, but the disagreement in between what I wrote, and what you read. In the quoted sentence, I was talking about the building, or implementation, process. What you then began to talk about was the design process.

Computer programming is much more design than implementation, unless
I'm too old to keep up with new ideas and I've missed some radical
change.  The analogy of the construction of a bridge I believe is
closer to the real thing if one considers the design rather than the
implementation.  Ergo...

++L

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[Patrick Kelly]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: 9fans-bounces@9fans.net [mailto:9fans-bounces@9fans.net] On Behalf Of lucio@proxima.alt.za
> Sent: Saturday, April 17, 2010 10:26 AM
> To: 9fans@9fans.net
> Subject: Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)
> 
> > You can be right about the manpower issue. In no way could on man build a bridge, but one man can build efficient software.
> 
> Even here there is room for disagreement.  Do you think a community-designed bridge would be preferable to one designed by a
> single architect?  The seminal concept of "The Bazaar and the Cathedral" overlooks the disasters the befell cathedrals designed by
> consecutive architects.

Yes there is, but the disagreement in between what I wrote, and what you read. In the quoted sentence, I was talking about the building, or implementation, process. What you then began to talk about was the design process.

> ++L

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[lucio]

> You can be right about the manpower issue. In no way could on man build a bridge, but one man can build efficient software.

Even here there is room for disagreement.  Do you think a
community-designed bridge would be preferable to one designed by a
single architect?  The seminal concept of "The Bazaar and the
Cathedral" overlooks the disasters the befell cathedrals designed by
consecutive architects.

++L

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[Patrick Kelly]

> On the other hand: doesn't individual development suffers from at least two problems?
> 
> (1) lack of a common vision leading to potentially widely divergent and incompatible solutions
> (2) lack of sufficient energy (manpower etc.) behind any given project development to make any real headway.
> 
> Presumably there's a happy medium between supreme bloat and minimalism?
> 

Look into the farm studies of Poland.

Individual work has a benefit no community work can have; honor. That product's success or failure is going to affect the image of who created it. When an individual creates a product, it has a desire to see it succeed. When a group creates a product, they have a desire to get their paychecks.

You can be right about the manpower issue. In no way could on man build a bridge, but one man can build efficient software.

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[lucio]

> On the other hand: doesn't individual development suffers from at least two problems?
>
> (1) lack of a common vision leading to potentially widely divergent and incompatible solutions

Yes, but the products are small enough that one can bring two
incompatible strands together.  Whereas dealing with a _single_
version of GCC is a nightmare that no one wants to tackle.  So we
swallow its insanities and call them features.  More to the point, we
let ourselves become dependent on it because we imagine that there are
no alternatives.  And in fact, there aren't any, if we measure them by
the very bloat that we have become dependent on.

> (2) lack of sufficient energy (manpower etc.) behind any given project development to make any real headway.
>
We sent man on the Moon without GCC or autoconf.  It concerns me that
the number of features we seem unable to do without is growing
according to Moore's law.

> Presumably there's a happy medium between supreme bloat and minimalism?

Maybe, but there isn't a mathematical formula defining this vague grey
area.  So when making a decision, you have to pick one of two mutually
exclusive guiding principles.

++L

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[erik quanstrom]

> It's imperative that the current official Plan 9 sources and distro
> remain undisturbed.

okay.  it may not be your intention, but now you're trolling.
you complained that the official sources were stagnant in
your opening salvo.  now you're arguing the opposite.  hard
to take this completely seriously.

> ... are simply - by far - much more important and practical to a greater
> number of people than these other prominent Plan 9  idioms:
>
> * radical frugal simplicity throughout the entire system

i think you have the ideology wrong.  from simplicity springs
forth 9p, etc.  without the frugal design none of the people who
use plan 9/inferno professionally would have any interest in plan 9.
simplicity is the key.

> * a stance against POSIX and other standards

what's your justification for this opinion?  plan 9 supports
many standards.  off the top of my head: icmp, bootp (pxe),
dhcp, ip, udp, tcp, smtp, http, ftp, imap4, pop, dns, etc.

> * a stance against alternate programming language paradigms

hmm.  doesn't Aleph count?  that language is dead and gone, but
it was a quite different language than c.

surely you don't mean that the plan 9 community should accept
(or implement) all languages.

> * a strong bias towards a particular form of user interaction with the
> system (i.e. acme, rio, etc)

suggest something better.  if it doesn't exist, then implement it.
convince people that you're ideas are better.

- erik

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[Karljurgen Feuerherm]

On the other hand: doesn't individual development suffers from at least two problems?

(1) lack of a common vision leading to potentially widely divergent and incompatible solutions
(2) lack of sufficient energy (manpower etc.) behind any given project development to make any real headway.

Presumably there's a happy medium between supreme bloat and minimalism?

K

>>> <lucio@proxima.alt.za> 17/04/2010 8:20:59 am >>>

You (and I, even) may disagree, but history suggests that communal
development as it is known now leads to irreversible bloat.  So if you
have a brilliant idea (not some grandiose concepts with little meat)
you have to be able to deliver on it before anybody here will adopt
it.  Putting it another way, no one believes you when you claim that
there is another path out there that will lead to Eldorado.  Bring
back some gold nuggets and you'll see an immediate attitude change.

++L

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[Patrick Kelly]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: 9fans-bounces@9fans.net [mailto:9fans-bounces@9fans.net] On Behalf Of Corey
> Sent: Saturday, April 17, 2010 5:39 AM
> To: 9fans@9fans.net
> Subject: Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)
> 
> 
> I appreciate your time and consideration in your responses, thanks!
> 
> You made several points and asked several questions this email, however it's difficult for me to answer them because they appear to
> be put forth under the idea that "Plan X's" purpose is to natively host common popular consumer-level, end-user applications of
> various sorts under Plan 9, and/or to port gnu to Plan 9.
> 
> There also seemed to be a lingering impression that I'm suggesting that Plan 9 proper - the official distro - should be subject to the
> changes proposed by "Plan X".
> 
> However I think it's crucial that the current official Plan 9 distro continue as it always has. And I don't personally see enough value in
> the notion of gnu gcc and autotools being ported, or firefox and gtk, etc..

I don't see any value at all. This makes me wonder why you bring up...
 
> I do see  value in porting LLVM/Clang, which would help enable, for instance, a forked  and customized _subset_ of the EFL core
> libraries (not the E wm), ported and running like a native Plan 9 citizen via /dev/draw instead of X.

Could you elaborate? While looking into the LLVM's source, several times, is mostly garbled crud (although better than GCC), and they severely over-optimize.
I also don't understand why one would choose the EFL? It's not even stable yet.

Unless my memory fails me, the EFL was in C++. I could be wrong on this though.

You're basically asking to re-write a compiler and libraries, and call them a port. I'm not sure I understand what you're thinking.

> I'm imagining an alternative Plan 9 distro that jettisons just a couple select characteristics of the system which drastically increase the
> net sum total alien'ness that tends to obfuscate and/or divert attention away from (what I believe to be) the more important aspects
> of the Plan 9 experience, such as the ones I listed previously:
>
> * 9P
> * mutable namespaces
> * union directories
> * ubiquitous fileservers
> * transparent distributed services
> 
> Slightly more POSIX - but not total POSIX compliance - in addition to a non-gnu compiler that supports modern standard C dialects and
> other C-based languages would be an enabler for a greater number of people hoping to apply Plan 9 concepts under a broader and
> more general variety of purposes.

This I don't understand at all. Why would one need a separate Plan 9 distribution? Why don't you improve APE, and write compilers for the languages you need? There is no need for a fork.
 
> But even all that begins to miss the original attempted point of my first post: the idea that perhaps it could be beneficial if there were
> some means for interested Plan 9 fans to rationally discuss and speculate on different potential expressions of Plan 9 based operating
> systems.
>
> Attempting to do so here on 9fans continues to be a traditional source of agitation and flames, tempered with a healthy dose of shut
> up and code. (that's not an accusation or scornful judgment, just a statement of a "thing").

Yes, well no one codes. It's not so much shut up, as it is, stop asking us to do it.

A good building isn't designed by slapping any good idea into it. A good bridge isn't either. Good medicine isn't created by putting any chemical that helps in. They are engineered for ideal effectiveness. Plan 9 is in many ways, the same. All we ask for, is a reason why what people want to add is a good thing. Just simple rationale.

You're a free being and free to do as you please, no one is stopping you.
 
> I thought that perhaps talking in terms of what "a 'Plan X' _might_ look like" would be less divisive/threatening than talking in terms of
> what "Plan 9 ought or ought not become".
> 
> 
> Cheers

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[lucio]

> But even all that begins to miss the original attempted point of my
> first post: the idea that perhaps it could be beneficial if there
> were some means for interested Plan 9 fans to rationally discuss and
> speculate on different potential expressions of Plan 9 based operating
> systems.
>

That's called "show us the code!" around here :-)

It is frustrating to get only negative responses whenever issues like
this are raised, but you have to realise that those who agree with you
are not prepared to do the work and thus they have learnt to shut up
as they have nothing to put up.  Those who do put up, like fgb, do not
seek approval: they deliver the goods and know that they are
appreciated and utilised.

I guess that means that you ought to do the same.  To use myself as an
example, I'd be very pleased to find support for my efforts at porting
GCC to Plan 9 (yes, I have a working version, but I'm not happy with
the results), of adding ELF capabilities to the Plan 9 kernel (done
that, but testing it is a totally different kettle of fish), of
consolidating the Plan 9 native C toolchain with the fresher Go model,
then adding mips-64 to it and producing Plan 9 native or ELF code from
it all.  But it's not something I can expect anyone else to work on
with me, although a lot of work has been done by cinap and I have
learnt much from it.  These balls are all in my court: not very communal
development, but that is the spirit of Plan 9 and many believe that
Plan 9 is what it is because of this individual effort.

You (and I, even) may disagree, but history suggests that communal
development as it is known now leads to irreversible bloat.  So if you
have a brilliant idea (not some grandiose concepts with little meat)
you have to be able to deliver on it before anybody here will adopt
it.  Putting it another way, no one believes you when you claim that
there is another path out there that will lead to Eldorado.  Bring
back some gold nuggets and you'll see an immediate attitude change.

++L

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[Nick Frolov]

fre 2010-04-16 klockan 23:49 -0700 skrev Corey:
> I've been considering the prospect of implementing a
> kencc dialect for the clang c front-end).

It is more practical to start with adding LLVM IR target to kencc. You
won't get Clang's source analysis/refactoring features this way, but it
is a quite straightforward task, I plan to do it as part of my GSoC
project (which is creating a C compiler for Inferno with LLVM).

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[Corey]

On Saturday 17 April 2010 00:28:42 SHRIZZA wrote:
> Long-windedness aside, your thought process is fairly sound.
>

Sorry for the annoying verbosity.  It's difficult for me to express the
ideas more succinctly in a manner that reduces the risk of flames
or misunderstanding.

> However, keep in mind that Plan 9 represents an escape from the
> perversion of Unix.
>

That remains a valid, useful, and extremely valuable design goal.

It's imperative that the current official Plan 9 sources and distro
remain undisturbed.

> Is a compromise between Plan 9 and "Plan X" worth the risk of
> history repeating itself?
>

I realize I'm not omniscient - heck I'm not even very talented! - but
I'm not seeing how LLVM/Clang, and a little more POSIX (where
necessary to help port and 9'ify _select_ libraries) - induces a significant
risk of folks aiming to UNIX'ify (or LINUX'ify or GNU'ify) "Plan X".

The GNU/*NIX'ification of a Plan 9 based operating system just
seems to be a completely counter-productive, non-viable endeavor.
I couldn't imagine such an act of sheer pointlessness to gain much
traction.

Though I can imagine reasonable temporary stop gaps being used when
necessary, to be deprecated once the kludges in question are replaced
with their appropriately 9'ish solutions.


Cheers

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[Corey]

I appreciate your time and consideration in your responses, thanks!

You made several points and asked several questions this email,
however it's difficult for me to answer them because they appear
to be put forth under the idea that "Plan X's" purpose is to natively
host common popular consumer-level, end-user applications
of various sorts under Plan 9, and/or to port gnu to Plan 9.

There also seemed to be a lingering impression that I'm
suggesting that Plan 9 proper - the official distro - should be
subject to the changes proposed by "Plan X".

However I think it's crucial that the current official Plan 9 distro
continue as it always has. And I don't personally see enough value
in the notion of gnu gcc and autotools being ported, or firefox and gtk,
etc..

I do see  value in porting LLVM/Clang, which would help enable,
for instance, a forked  and customized _subset_ of the EFL core
libraries (not the E wm), ported and running like a native Plan 9
citizen via /dev/draw instead of X.

I'm imagining an alternative Plan 9 distro that jettisons just a couple
select characteristics of the system which drastically increase the net
sum total alien'ness that tends to obfuscate and/or divert attention
away from (what I believe to be) the more important aspects of the
Plan 9 experience, such as the ones I listed previously:

* 9P
* mutable namespaces
* union directories
* ubiquitous fileservers
* transparent distributed services

Slightly more POSIX - but not total POSIX compliance - in
addition to a non-gnu compiler that supports modern standard
C dialects and other C-based languages would be an enabler
for a greater number of people hoping to apply Plan 9 concepts
under a broader and more general variety of purposes.

But even all that begins to miss the original attempted point of my
first post: the idea that perhaps it could be beneficial if there
were some means for interested Plan 9 fans to rationally discuss and
speculate on different potential expressions of Plan 9 based operating
systems.

Attempting to do so here on 9fans continues to be a traditional source
of agitation and flames, tempered with a healthy dose of shut up and
code. (that's not an accusation or scornful judgment, just a statement
of a "thing").

I thought that perhaps talking in terms of what "a 'Plan X' _might_ look
like" would be less divisive/threatening than talking in terms of what
"Plan 9 ought or ought not become".


Cheers


On Saturday 17 April 2010 00:41:19 lucio@proxima.alt.za wrote:
> > ... are simply - by far - much more important and practical to a greater
> > number of people than these other prominent Plan 9  idioms:
> >
> > * radical frugal simplicity throughout the entire system
>
> This would remove itself as soon as the developer base increases
> beyond an indeterminate critical mass.  That's precisely how Linux
> grew beyond Minix.  But there is Linux already out there, so no
> clarion call to developers to move to a less popular platform.  Plan 9
> and NetBSD have many philosophical issues in common and both suffer
> (benefit?) from a shrinking user base because populism (fashion)
> rules.  Polluting Plan 9 with fashionable toys isn't going to save the
> world, isn't even going to be useful to the existing Plan 9 community,
> so why do you believe it should happen, rather than allow Plan 9 as it
> exists, both as a philosophy and as the implementation of this
> philosophy, to demonstrate that a simpler lifestyle is also
> sufficient?
>
> What do you see in a "liberated" Plan 9 that would make it superior to
> the existing tools out there?  Or, to ask the same question in a
> different form, why do you pick on Plan 9 to become your target
> platform through unwelcome (*) transformations instead of transforming
> that which is already much closer to your objectives?
>
> (*)	"unwelcome" both because some of us believe it to be ethically
> 	undesirable and because the more pragmatic ones amongst us have
> 	not found sufficient motive to focus on them.  Take fgb, for
> 	example, who found cause to port curses to Plan 9, opening the
> 	door to many new developments: few have done much with this, what
> 	changes would you effect that would increase these contributions
> 	significantly?
>
> > * a stance against POSIX and other standards
>
> The stance is against polluting Plan 9 with inconsistent,
> committee-defined functionalities that often contradict even common
> sense.  Posix is yet another cesspool where nothing is ever removed,
> no matter how foul.
>
> > * a stance against alternate programming language paradigms
>
> Not at all, only against extending C in a direction that has been
> shown to be counter-productive.  Alef was dropped out of necessity,
> Python and Perl are available, Go has been considered, Tcl was ported
> moderately easily, it is only the G++ model of C++ that has been
> proved intractable.  Sadly, that is what everyone is clamouring for,
> so it looks like a much bigger issue than is truly the case.  The
> problem here is again not of Plan 9's making, it is that the mass of
> developers have no understanding of portability and therefore paint
> themselves into the Linux corner.  Again, how do you propose to alter
> Plan 9 to address this form of antisocial behaviour?
>
> > * a strong bias towards a particular form of user interaction with the
> > system (i.e. acme, rio, etc)
>
> There are already two camps in Plan 9, one that uses acme, the other
> uses sam and many experiences cannot be shared because of that.  Are
> you sure you'd improve on this by releasing hundreds of customised
> window managers for people to share even less?  How would adding emacs
> as an editor improve matters, as an example?
>
> Now, imagine that in your Plan X context somebody actually ported
> Firefox: what kind of gymnastics would it take to feed the port
> upstream and make sure that the next release does not destroy all the
> efforts?  And what are the chances that the various extensions to
> Firefox would also be ported and maintained?  Where are you going to
> find the good will and resources to maintain just one of this class of
> projects, nevermind the tens of thousands out there (of which GCC/G++
> is one, by the way, why is it so hard to port it to Plan 9, if it is
> such a portable piece of engineering?).  And, most crucially, why
> would anyone offer to do that when it's already available?
>
> Linux filled a gap by being free at the time when there was a great
> demand for inexpensive and unencumbered software to match the
> ridiculously low price of computer hardware.  No analogous demand
> exists today that would be satisfied by the Plan X you envisage, or,
> more humbly, perhaps you can show me what such a demand is.
>
> But if the demand is, as is my case, for a simpler, easier to
> maintain, easier to understand computing platform, then Plan 9 and not
> your Plan X, is the answer.
>
> ++L

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[lucio]

> ... are simply - by far - much more important and practical to a greater
> number of people than these other prominent Plan 9  idioms:
>
> * radical frugal simplicity throughout the entire system

This would remove itself as soon as the developer base increases
beyond an indeterminate critical mass.  That's precisely how Linux
grew beyond Minix.  But there is Linux already out there, so no
clarion call to developers to move to a less popular platform.  Plan 9
and NetBSD have many philosophical issues in common and both suffer
(benefit?) from a shrinking user base because populism (fashion)
rules.  Polluting Plan 9 with fashionable toys isn't going to save the
world, isn't even going to be useful to the existing Plan 9 community,
so why do you believe it should happen, rather than allow Plan 9 as it
exists, both as a philosophy and as the implementation of this
philosophy, to demonstrate that a simpler lifestyle is also
sufficient?

What do you see in a "liberated" Plan 9 that would make it superior to
the existing tools out there?  Or, to ask the same question in a
different form, why do you pick on Plan 9 to become your target
platform through unwelcome (*) transformations instead of transforming
that which is already much closer to your objectives?

(*)	"unwelcome" both because some of us believe it to be ethically
	undesirable and because the more pragmatic ones amongst us have
	not found sufficient motive to focus on them.  Take fgb, for
	example, who found cause to port curses to Plan 9, opening the
	door to many new developments: few have done much with this, what
	changes would you effect that would increase these contributions
	significantly?

> * a stance against POSIX and other standards

The stance is against polluting Plan 9 with inconsistent,
committee-defined functionalities that often contradict even common
sense.  Posix is yet another cesspool where nothing is ever removed,
no matter how foul.

> * a stance against alternate programming language paradigms

Not at all, only against extending C in a direction that has been
shown to be counter-productive.  Alef was dropped out of necessity,
Python and Perl are available, Go has been considered, Tcl was ported
moderately easily, it is only the G++ model of C++ that has been
proved intractable.  Sadly, that is what everyone is clamouring for,
so it looks like a much bigger issue than is truly the case.  The
problem here is again not of Plan 9's making, it is that the mass of
developers have no understanding of portability and therefore paint
themselves into the Linux corner.  Again, how do you propose to alter
Plan 9 to address this form of antisocial behaviour?

> * a strong bias towards a particular form of user interaction with the
> system (i.e. acme, rio, etc)

There are already two camps in Plan 9, one that uses acme, the other
uses sam and many experiences cannot be shared because of that.  Are
you sure you'd improve on this by releasing hundreds of customised
window managers for people to share even less?  How would adding emacs
as an editor improve matters, as an example?

Now, imagine that in your Plan X context somebody actually ported
Firefox: what kind of gymnastics would it take to feed the port
upstream and make sure that the next release does not destroy all the
efforts?  And what are the chances that the various extensions to
Firefox would also be ported and maintained?  Where are you going to
find the good will and resources to maintain just one of this class of
projects, nevermind the tens of thousands out there (of which GCC/G++
is one, by the way, why is it so hard to port it to Plan 9, if it is
such a portable piece of engineering?).  And, most crucially, why
would anyone offer to do that when it's already available?

Linux filled a gap by being free at the time when there was a great
demand for inexpensive and unencumbered software to match the
ridiculously low price of computer hardware.  No analogous demand
exists today that would be satisfied by the Plan X you envisage, or,
more humbly, perhaps you can show me what such a demand is.

But if the demand is, as is my case, for a simpler, easier to
maintain, easier to understand computing platform, then Plan 9 and not
your Plan X, is the answer.

++L

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[SHRIZZA]

Long-windedness aside, your thought process is fairly sound.

However, keep in mind that Plan 9 represents an escape from the perversion of Unix.
Is a compromise between Plan 9 and "Plan X" worth the risk of history repeating itself?

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[Corey]

On Friday 16 April 2010 21:29:44 lucio@proxima.alt.za wrote:
> > Messy, with high levels of noise-to-signal - certainly... but absolutely,
> > astoundingly productive and in constant motion.
>
> In my opinion, most of the output from the Posix developers is trash.
> It's the equivalent of a cancer, polluting the body with poisons.
> Somewhere in the mix there will certainly be something of value, but
> it is well hidden by the bulk of the production.  The few jewels are
> also corrupted by the manner in which they need to be delivered,
> namely the autoconf stuff.
>

Understood.  Though I don't share your opinion quite to the degree that
you expressed. Additionally, I have no desire to debate subjective
perspectives of the overall net usefulness of POSIX, let alone autoconf -
everyone, of course, has their opinions and experiences, favorable or
otherwise.

> If you consider things more objectively you will also acknowledge that
> very little new is being created, but rather many old things are being
> "improved" upon (regurgitated) in manners that consume more and more
> computing cycles and deliver less and less performance.
>

Again, I'd prefer to not to debate the ratio of good software vs. trashy
software, or to debate what's new and useful vs. merely regurgitated and
worsened. Though it's certainly a perfectly interesting topic.

> Consider further the following: porting GCC/G++ to a new platform
> rather than Linux is almost inconceivable, porting more and more Linux
> software to a compiler suite other than GCC/G++ is equally
> inconceivable.  If you can't see anything wrong with GCC's bloat, the
> dead end it leads to, there is little reason to argue with you.
>

Finally, regarding this mention of gcc - the "Plan X" in my mind's eye
would far prefer LLVM/Clang to gcc, for precisely the reasons you
point out. (I've been considering the prospect of implementing a
kencc dialect for the clang c front-end).

(I'm using "Plan X" in the sense I mentioned in the original post - i.e.
I'm _not_ suggesting that the official releases of Plan 9 proper should
introduce the platform changes under discussion. "Plan X" means:
any alternative expression of the Plan 9 operating system. Also, I'm
using the phrase "my mind's eye", in order to stress that this is all just
speculative, science-fiction)

Regarding the POSIX situation - a "Plan X" of my mind's eye is not
concerned with fighting that particular battle.

The basic wild-eyed premise, is that an alternative Plan 9 distribution
which "features" a native, more "POSIXy" approximation than APE, in
addition to a native compiler that supported a larger number of languages
and C dialects than 9c - would lead to a much more broadly comfortable
environment for a greater number of general developers and users.

The theory, is that the Plan 9 implementations of the following concepts:

* 9P
* mutable namespaces
* union directories
* ubiquitous fileservers
* transparent distributed services
* etc

... are simply - by far - much more important and practical to a greater
number of people than these other prominent Plan 9  idioms:

* radical frugal simplicity throughout the entire system
* a stance against POSIX and other standards
* a stance against alternate programming language paradigms
* a strong bias towards a particular form of user interaction with the
system (i.e. acme, rio, etc)


Peace

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[lucio]

> Messy, with high levels of noise-to-signal - certainly... but absolutely,
> astoundingly productive and in constant motion.

In my opinion, most of the output from the Posix developers is trash.
It's the equivalent of a cancer, polluting the body with poisons.
Somewhere in the mix there will certainly be something of value, but
it is well hidden by the bulk of the production.  The few jewels are
also corrupted by the manner in which they need to be delivered,
namely the autoconf stuff.

If you consider things more objectively you will also acknowledge that
very little new is being created, but rather many old things are being
"improved" upon (regurgitated) in manners that consume more and more
computing cycles and deliver less and less performance.

Consider further the following: porting GCC/G++ to a new platform
rather than Linux is almost inconceivable, porting more and more Linux
software to a compiler suite other than GCC/G++ is equally
inconceivable.  If you can't see anything wrong with GCC's bloat, the
dead end it leads to, there is little reason to argue with you.

++L

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[Federico G. Benavento]

too long for me to read, could you summarize in 3 lines?

On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 8:58 PM, Corey <corey@bitworthy.net> wrote:
>
> The following is not a troll. (the subject is for the sake of humor only)
>
> On Friday 16 April 2010 11:10:28 Patrick Kelly wrote:
>> Have you look at what Plan 9 has done? I would hardly go to say we are
>> reactive. Every other system has reacted to what Plan 9 has done, not the
>> other way around.
>>
>
> However, "what Plan 9 has done"... occurred many years ago.
>
> But what has it done _lately_?  (that's an honest question, not a
> troll)
>
> In the mean time, that horrible, over-complex, fugly bloated mess that -
> according to 9fans apparently - represents the vast majority of software
> (and developers)  in the world... is in fact... _hugely_ prolific, and under
> constant development and experimentation: generating untold riches in
> wealth in a great number of industries and constantly increasing user and
> developer productivity via a rich plethora of options in programming
> languages, conceptual models, applications, and higher-level abstractions.
> Messy, with high levels of noise-to-signal - certainly... but absolutely,
> astoundingly productive and in constant motion.
>
> While the radically simple, perfectly sound Plan 9 continues to focus
> primarily at being an IDE and file server... for C programmers... of an
> obscure/alien dialect... because POSIX sucks, and UNIX sucks, and all
> Standards suck, and all other languages besides C (and rc) suck, and OOP
> sucks, and amateurs suck, and higher level abstractions suck, and gui buttons
> and widgets suck, and keyboard shortcuts suck, and the web sucks, and larger
> scale community-driven collaboration sucks... etc. etc. ad infinitum. Clean,
> certainly... but in near/relative stasis as well.
>
> When "less is more" degenerates into "nothing is better than something"
> (and "get out of my yard!")...  indicates (to me) that the community involved
> could possibly bring in some outside air. (I'm referring to the abstract
> community - not each individual, who I'm sure all get plenty of fresh air).
> It would be great if 9fans wasn't simply a place where people congregate
> partially as means to get their grognard on in full effect mode  - or
> alternately, if there was a place for 9fans where they could speculate
> productively on greenfield ideas regarding experimental new directions that
> alternative Plan 9 _based_ operating systems might be well suited towards.
>
> But here on 9fans, even the basic process of community meta-cognition ends
> in that all too familiar "flame drizzle".
>
> To be honest, it's a shame that Plan 9 appears, for whatever reasons, to
> be firmly entrenched within the context of a particular school of C systems
> programming. It seems clear that Plan 9's core model has got a
> helluvalot more to offer than rio + acme + kencc and friends... but if Glenda
> doesn't get the chance to produce further offspring, that theory will never be
> fully realized.
>
> So as to not merely "complain", I'll venture some obvious ideas:
>
> Perhaps a new mailing list - to act as a lightening rod for "non-canon" Plan 9
> ideas, discussion and projects.
>
> Perhaps a linguistic convention to help mitigate the dichotomy (and perpetual
> conflict) that occurs between two camps of thought regarding the official
> standard Plan 9 distribution. The conflict seems to arise due to differring
> ideas of just what 'Plan 9' is... there appears to be an unnecessary friction
> between keeping Plan 9 mostly as it _is_, and making Plan 9 something
> _different_ than it currently is.
>
> In other words, there's a battle between "Plan 9 same" and "Plan 9 different"
> - as though There Can Only Be One. But if "Plan 9 different" was called, say,
> Plan X instead of Plan 9... then perhaps the "Plan 9 same" folks wouldn't feel
> that Plan 9 proper was in constant jeopardy of becoming polluted/diluted.
>
> The Plan 9ers have "successfully" prevented the Plan Xers from "encroaching",
> but it's the Plan Xers who are going to find new and interesting expressions
> of a Plan 9 based operating system, however in order to bootstrap, the Plan
> Xers need the experience and insights of the Plan 9ers... yet there's an
> antagonistic conundrum that prevents the two perspectives from peering.
>
> Is any of this even worth discussing? Or is this just another example of
> "talk, talk, talk" from yet another troll who has no intention of actually
> doing something productive?
>
>
> Kind regards
>
>



-- 
Federico G. Benavento

Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[andrey mirtchovski]

TL;DR

[9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

[Corey]

The following is not a troll. (the subject is for the sake of humor only)

On Friday 16 April 2010 11:10:28 Patrick Kelly wrote:
> Have you look at what Plan 9 has done? I would hardly go to say we are
> reactive. Every other system has reacted to what Plan 9 has done, not the
> other way around.
>

However, "what Plan 9 has done"... occurred many years ago.

But what has it done _lately_?  (that's an honest question, not a
troll)

In the mean time, that horrible, over-complex, fugly bloated mess that -
according to 9fans apparently - represents the vast majority of software
(and developers)  in the world... is in fact... _hugely_ prolific, and under
constant development and experimentation: generating untold riches in
wealth in a great number of industries and constantly increasing user and
developer productivity via a rich plethora of options in programming
languages, conceptual models, applications, and higher-level abstractions.
Messy, with high levels of noise-to-signal - certainly... but absolutely,
astoundingly productive and in constant motion.

While the radically simple, perfectly sound Plan 9 continues to focus
primarily at being an IDE and file server... for C programmers... of an
obscure/alien dialect... because POSIX sucks, and UNIX sucks, and all
Standards suck, and all other languages besides C (and rc) suck, and OOP
sucks, and amateurs suck, and higher level abstractions suck, and gui buttons
and widgets suck, and keyboard shortcuts suck, and the web sucks, and larger
scale community-driven collaboration sucks... etc. etc. ad infinitum. Clean,
certainly... but in near/relative stasis as well.

When "less is more" degenerates into "nothing is better than something"
(and "get out of my yard!")...  indicates (to me) that the community involved
could possibly bring in some outside air. (I'm referring to the abstract
community - not each individual, who I'm sure all get plenty of fresh air).
It would be great if 9fans wasn't simply a place where people congregate
partially as means to get their grognard on in full effect mode  - or
alternately, if there was a place for 9fans where they could speculate
productively on greenfield ideas regarding experimental new directions that
alternative Plan 9 _based_ operating systems might be well suited towards.

But here on 9fans, even the basic process of community meta-cognition ends
in that all too familiar "flame drizzle".

To be honest, it's a shame that Plan 9 appears, for whatever reasons, to
be firmly entrenched within the context of a particular school of C systems
programming. It seems clear that Plan 9's core model has got a
helluvalot more to offer than rio + acme + kencc and friends... but if Glenda
doesn't get the chance to produce further offspring, that theory will never be
fully realized.

So as to not merely "complain", I'll venture some obvious ideas:

Perhaps a new mailing list - to act as a lightening rod for "non-canon" Plan 9
ideas, discussion and projects.

Perhaps a linguistic convention to help mitigate the dichotomy (and perpetual
conflict) that occurs between two camps of thought regarding the official
standard Plan 9 distribution. The conflict seems to arise due to differring
ideas of just what 'Plan 9' is... there appears to be an unnecessary friction
between keeping Plan 9 mostly as it _is_, and making Plan 9 something
_different_ than it currently is.

In other words, there's a battle between "Plan 9 same" and "Plan 9 different"
- as though There Can Only Be One. But if "Plan 9 different" was called, say,
Plan X instead of Plan 9... then perhaps the "Plan 9 same" folks wouldn't feel
that Plan 9 proper was in constant jeopardy of becoming polluted/diluted.

The Plan 9ers have "successfully" prevented the Plan Xers from "encroaching",
but it's the Plan Xers who are going to find new and interesting expressions
of a Plan 9 based operating system, however in order to bootstrap, the Plan
Xers need the experience and insights of the Plan 9ers... yet there's an
antagonistic conundrum that prevents the two perspectives from peering.

Is any of this even worth discussing? Or is this just another example of
"talk, talk, talk" from yet another troll who has no intention of actually
doing something productive?


Kind regards