Re: [9fans] a bit OT, programming style question

[Balwinder S Dheeman <bdheeman@gmail.com>]

On 04/10/2009 05:08 AM, Eris Discordia wrote:
>> this is the "space-shuttle dichotomy."  it's a false one.  it's a
>> continuum. its ends are dangerous.
>
> So somewhere in the middle is the golden mean? I have no objections to
> that. *BSD systems very well represent a silver, if not a golden,
> mean--just my idea, of course.
>
>> it is interesting to me that some software manages to run off both
>> ends of this continuum at the same time.  in linux your termcap
>> from 1981 will still work, but software written to access /sys last
>> year is likely out-of-date.
>
> While I won't vouch for Linux as a good OS (user-land and kernel
> combined) I understand what you see as its eccentricity is merely a
> side-effect of openness. Tighten the development up and you get a
> BSD-style system (committer/contributor/maintainer/grunt/user
> highest-to-lowest ranking, with a demiurge position for Theo de Raadt).
> Tighten it even further up with in-ken shared among a core group of
> old-timers and thoroughbreds transmitted only to serious researchers and
> you get Plan 9.
>
> You are right, after all. It all lies on a continuum. Actually, more
> tightly regulated Linux distros such as Slackware readily demonstrate
> that; they easily beat all-out all-open distros like Fedora (whose
> existence is probably perceived at Red Hat as a big brainstorming project).
>
>> your insinuation that *bsd is a real serious system and plan 9 is
>> a research system doesn't make any historical sense to me.  they
>> both started as research systems.  i am not aware of any law that
>> prevents a system that started as a research project from becoming
>> a serious production system.
>
> What I am insinuating is more like this: any serious system will sooner
> or later have to grow warts and/or contract herpes. That's an
> unavoidable consequence of social life. If you do insist that Plan 9 has
> no warts, or far less warts than the average, or that it has never seen
> a cold sore on its upper lip then I'll happily conclude it has never
> lived socially. And I haven't really ever used Plan 9 or "been into it."
> The no-herpes indicator is that strong.

I for one could not resist adding that no doubt, Plan9 and *BSD are
quite clean and well maintained systems, but these IMHO, have but only a
little use for an average user, because of a noticeable scarcity of
hardware drivers and real applications. Hence, who cares a cow gone dry.

Years ago, in an article, 'Program design in UNIX environment', Rob Pike
and Brain W. Kernighan discussed UNIX programming environment, program
design, tools and some problems introduced by the users, after UNIX
commercially became a success. Have, they mentioned and, or do they know
who indeed is behind that success?

>> i know of many thousands of plan 9 systems in production right
>> now.

Erik, you might want to know how many *million* people use Linux ;)
Won't you?

--
Dr Balwinder S "bsd" Dheeman          Registered Linux User: #229709
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