From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Sam To: <9fans@cse.psu.edu> In-Reply-To: <3EB9352B.9060603@ameritech.net> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Subject: [9fans] design clairvoyance & the 9 way Date: Wed, 7 May 2003 12:33:45 -0400 Topicbox-Message-UUID: a2af1ea2-eacb-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025 > problem. Think about how many of these things could > have been eradicated if we had the fore-sight when > UNIX was being designed. Hasn't Pike been saying > this stuff for years? > ``Your conventional `good citizen' can be depended on not to be too thoughtful. His ideas, beliefs, and practices are those of other people. He loves and hates with them. He is unreflectively loyal to the institutions under which he lives, and to the men who administer them. But the really educated good man has no right to go along without question.'' - Henry Raymond Mussey While written with government in mind, this statement seems apropos as a starter to this thread. What design issues about plan9 made it unsatisfactory to consider reworking research UNIX? Why reimplement everything from the ground up? If, for example, mk isn't sufficiently better than make, why bother? I've heard the spirit in the labs was such that everything had to be written anew to be considered worth using. In retrospect, was this mantra taken too far? Compatibility was of no concern, but now that labs folks are getting disseminated into the non-labs world we see 9 libraries getting "ported" over for use on *nix. Is there any concern that maybe it would have been better to keep an eye on compatibility instead of running off in a direction claiming the one true path? I guess I'm just wondering what ``problems with UNIX were too deep to fix.'' We know why aspects of current unix systems are inferior to 9, but perhaps if more effort was given to redesigning the problem areas in place the *nix world wouldn't be stuck using hacked 20 year old technology and we'd all be better off. Thoughts? Cheers, Sam