From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Message-ID: <89a5343d7bd3a4fe85df04a398d25e7b@collyer.net> To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu Subject: Re: [9fans] ls, rc question From: Geoff Collyer In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2004 01:46:44 -0800 Topicbox-Message-UUID: 38b965b4-eacd-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 Mathematics is a powerful tool, but not appropriate for solving all problems. I think that the things that made Unix and now Plan 9 most appealing are matters of judgement and taste. Obviously hard technical work has also gone into those systems, but I don't believe that that is enough to produce a compelling operating system. I wouldn't want to try to justify the creation or use of pipes or 9p or namespaces or user-mode file servers solely using mathematics.