Re: [9fans] gcc not an option for Plan9

[Kurt H Maier <khm-9@intma.in>]

I see once again it's a matter of tone.

On Mon, Mar 25, 2013 at 08:27:33AM +0200, lucio@proxima.alt.za wrote:
>
> Philosophically, Plan 9 has rattled the proverbial cage and Go is an
> earthquake by comparison.  The outcome is still to be evaluated.  But
> not everyone is going to see it in the same way.
>

Absolutely correct.  In the sector I work, it will be years and years
before any of Go's benefits trickle up; its mode of parallelism does not
apply well to my systems.  In the meantime, it does nobody any good to
pre-emptively stifle someone's investigations by posting terse messages
about how irrelevant it is and how the current decisions are the right
ones -- at least without providing any kind of technical insight inside
the message.

> Of relevance here is that if Rob and Russ and Ken had let
> considerations such as pampering slow hardware, we'd have a different
> language and many features would not be available.  At the same time,
> the need for a slim version of Go will grow with acceptance of the fat
> model and then people like Kurt may be inspired to restore in the
> linker the ability to trim libraries of unused modules (don't hold
> your breath!).

Indeed.  One shouldn't hold breath on this topic, because Kurt's not in
the business of repairing software.  In fact, Kurt's business doesn't
overlap with Plan 9 or Go in the slightest -- he's a Plan 9 hobbiest who
has assessed that Go solves very specific problems which don't affect
him.  That's why he's subscribed to 9fans and not golang-nuts.

>
> The people who insists that ONE tool should encompass all these
> options are those who are too unproductive to do it themselves and
> fail to see that no-one owes them.
>
> In my other life managing a backpackers, I see way too many young
> people who seem to think that our generation somehow owe them
> something they are able but not willing to seek for themselves.  I
> could tell you where most of them seem to come from, but I'm sure that
> would be unfair to all those they leave behind while spending money
> they did not earn to travel in comfort around the world.
>

Yes, let's talk about entitlements.  There are people here who seem to
think that one tool should encompass all options, and that that tool is
the Labs distribution.  All of this acrimony needs to go away.
Different people have different goals, and it's not the job of the 9fans
hegemony to ascribe value to these goals.  I personally don't care if
someone wants to get gcc 4.8 built on Plan 9, for exactly the same
reason I don't care about the size of the binaries Go produces.  I don't
need or want either tool, but when people -- especially people in
current or former leadership positions on these projects -- show up just
to slag articles of curiosity for no particular reason, I'm going to
make fun of them.

I know that the population of 9fans contains a sizeable percentage of
people who would like to cast Plan 9 in amber, to hold it immutable as
an example to future generations.  That's an unrealistic expectation.

khm