Re: [9fans] RESOLVED: recoving important header file rudely

[Noah Evans <noah.evans@gmail.com>]

Plan 9 is a research operating system. It also happens that many
people who use it for research also use it in production.

Many of the engineering decisions that went into Plan 9 were a matter
of priorities. The creators of Plan 9 chose a simple, comprehensible C
compiler over more complex alternatives because it made understanding
the transition from code on the page to code on the machine easier.
There were experiments in other languages like Aleph(mentioned
earlier) which were deprecated when the effort of maintaining them
outweighed their benefits. Likewise Plan 9 doesn't have a real mode 16
bit assembler, all of the real mode code is written as packed macros
for the regular assembler. It wasn't worth the effort.

Many of the issues you bring up are similar. If the bugs you find keep
you from getting productive work done on Plan 9, by all means submit a
patch. If you desperately need a high level language to solve your
problems, refer to the languages that other people on the list have
mentioned and roll your own. If you'd like it to be adopted by the
greater Plan 9 community, write in a way that an expert versed in the
Plan 9 coding style could easily understand and modify it.

Noah


On Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 8:15 PM,  <smiley@zenzebra.mv.com> wrote:
> "Federico G. Benavento" <benavento@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> I take it was trivial to find that overflow, come on the code is so simple
>> that you just see and get it the first time, which makes easier to find/fix
>
> Oh, really?  Simple to find?  Trivial?  If so, then why wasn't that
> overflow found and fixed long before I ever laid eyes on it?
> (Rhetorical question, of course.)
>
>> bugs, iterators and the other crap you mentioned would had obfuscated
>> it.
>
> The "other crap" I mentioned would have made that bug IMPOSSIBLE.
>
>> Plan 9 is not bug-free, but they easier to find and fix, think about
>> that.
>
> I know you love Plan 9, and I have no desire to disrupt that
> relationship.  I'm quite infatuated with it, myself.  But neither of our
> loves' would be very realistic if we didn't admit that Plan 9 is just
> full of bugs like this.
>
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