From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: "Nigel Roles" To: "Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs" <9fans@cse.psu.edu> Subject: RE: [9fans] alright, this should be interesting Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2004 08:36:07 +0100 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit In-Reply-To: Topicbox-Message-UUID: f16a4a4c-eacd-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 > > I think the effect is direct, not just by examples. > If some specific function of your (high quality) software > written for some (low quality) kernel counts on a kernel feature that > works sometimes depending on special cases, sooner or later > that ugliness will cause ugliness in the code that deals with it. > I think forsyth's example says it exactly. You can't build any better > than the foundation will allow. > > Ugliness is in the eye of the beholder. Google have combined a huge wobbly raft of Linux PCs and a search algorithm into something which has the eyeballs of the world choosing it in preference. Are you telling me that Google would be demonstrably better built on Plan 9? I can't see that, and nor would any of their customers, because the kernel is hidden from view. You can perhaps argue that there are alternatives to Linux which might have lessened the amount of work they needed to do to reach system administration nirvana, but from what Rob says they have it solved pretty well. Another example is MacOS X, built on BSD, the latter lampooned by Linux acolytes for being no good for laptops. Apple solved the problems, such that most people I know would buy Apple as their next laptop. If someone asks me which mobile phone to buy, I always say Nokia. This is because, regardless of which kernel they use (and they have changed several times), the MMI is generally preferred. You can claim that ugly kernels beget ugly code, and I would agree. Claiming that ugly kernels beget ugly applications is going too far. There are too many counterexamples. Most users in the world don't see the code, and don't care about it's uglyness. They care whether something works and is easy to use.