Re: [9fans] insularity

[Noah Evans <noah.evans@cwru.edu>]

I'm really not sure how to answer this without waxing philosophical.

I think the real key here is the idea of nature vs nurture. Some people are born with a great ability to handle complexity, they can, just by looking at the source code, discussions and man pages, determine all of the important ideas by induction. These people will naturally gravitate towards the elegant and the good.

But there are other people, who lack this natural ability but still possess a great thirst for knowledge and drive yet can't find the right information on their own. These are the people with the potential to grasp Plan 9 but lack the nurturing environment that will allow them to realize this potential. They muddle around the wiki for a little bit, read some 9fans and maybe post once or twice and then decide they're too stupid, plan 9 sucks, what have you. 

These are the people I'm talking about. Most of the people on this list are in the first category so people in the second category seem dense or deliberately obtuse. By trying to understand their position I think we can do a lot more to make Plan 9 accessible.

Noah

----- Original Message -----
From: Dave Lukes <davel@anvil.com>
Date: Wednesday, March 17, 2004 12:43 pm
Subject: Re: [9fans] insularity

> > When you pit this mastery against the sense of entitlement  that 
> comes> from mainstream systems you get conflicts like this. People 
> expect> canned solutions not pointers to *how* to solve things.
> 
> Yes, and maybe we should emphasise this more.
> 
> Personally, I feel that if people don't "get it",
> then maybe that's their problem?
> 
> > The real issue is how to solve this problem. 
> 
> Well, to some extent it solves itself ...
> 
> If people aren't willing to invest the effort,
> then they don't get the benefit.
> 
> Remember, I'm in a far worse position than a lot of 9fans:
> I have no plan9 system, but nonetheless, I think I "get it".
> 
> > I propose that we emphasize the tools philosophy to clarify the 
> underlying philosophy and justifications in introductions to new 
> users. It's already there really, but scattered in other 
> explanations rather than dealt with systematically. 
> 
> Well, OK, but I would have thought that was a "given" ...
> 
> > One way of solving this would be to use existing books like the 
> >  "Unix Programming Environment" or "Software Tools" with their 
> code updated for Plan 9. I think a lot of people avoid those books 
> because they don't believe they need to learn ancient Unix or 
> Ratfor. And it's a shame because they miss the conceptual forest 
> for the trees of individual system implementations and cruft. 
> 
> > I'll gladly contribute anything I can if we can agree on a roadmap.
> 
> Well, I still think that,
> since I "get it" with the available information, there's no problem!
> 
> 	Dave.
> 
> 
>