Re: [9fans] interesting potential targets for plan 9 and/or inferno

[Lyndon Nerenberg <lyndon@orthanc.ca>]

On Mar 7, 2007, at 10:41 AM, Robert Sherwood wrote:

> The interfaces are baffling.  As Master Shake said, "It's too  
> advanced to be compatible". Not just rio; I mean adding a user to a  
> system, logging in under a different account by rebooting, mounting  
> devices as filesystems, making configuration changes, everything is  
> different. I don't think anything makes sense until you understand  
> the entire system, top to bottom. It's a difficult investment to  
> make. I appreciate that this is not your problem.

But this has nothing to do with Plan 9.  It's a human-brain-firmware  
bug.  You're most comfortable with what you learn learn.

Put me in front of VMS and I start to hurl. To me, the interface is  
rebarbative.

Put a VMS user in front of a UNIX terminal and they will hurl.  To  
them, anything that lacks logicals is untenable.

How many of you enjoy the music your kids listen to?  Your parents  
listen to?  I'm confidant the number of hands that go up in this  
crowd will be significantly higher than in a same-sized sample of  
general computer users.  The Plan 9 community self-selects for a very  
open mind set.  As much of the elegance of Plan 9 derives from its  
user community as derives from the code.  Catering to the masses will  
drive away that community, ensuring the death of the code base.

--lyndon