From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
Message-ID: <95646965ac5da823f380f5635ded96d3@vitanuova.com>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] Plan 9 killer applications?
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 2004 17:15:52 +0000
From: rog@vitanuova.com
In-Reply-To: <70b89b72104ae7cd573a61dc83348534@plan9.ucalgary.ca>
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the whole is (much) greater than the sum of its parts.

for me, the whole question "what is plan 9's killer application?"  is
misguided - it comes from an arena where each piece of software tries
to fulfil a complete end-user use scenario.

in contrast, plan 9 has *tools*, few of which are by themselves
sufficient to accomplish a particular goal; but it also provides an
infrastructure that provides support for combining these tools
together.

if i build a tool in the plan 9 style, it instantly becomes an
integrated part of the whole plan 9 "application".

unix started down this road, but plan 9 goes so much further, by
making it trivial to combine existing tools with aspects of a running
program's interface.

the fact that i can do something like:

	grep -i Plan /mnt/term/mail/fs/mbox/3136/body > /mnt/acme/new/body

counts for an amazing amount.

the only sad thing is that it lacks many of the tools that it would be
nice to have, given the capabilities of today's hardware.