[9fans] emacs vs plan9

[9fans] emacs vs plan9

[David Tolpin]

Hi,

this is not cheating or trolling, really. I had written quite a bit of
parallel, asynchronously and synchronously intercommunicating code for
emacs. 

GNU Emacs is an OS with multitasking, good API for parallel programming,
and a single unifying paradigm:

	everything is an edit buffer.

Including special devices, directories etc.
What are advantages of Plan9's

	everything is a file server

over it?

David Tolpin
http://davidashen.net/

Re: [9fans] emacs vs plan9

[Rob Pike]

saying 'everything is an edit buffer' doesn't get you very far.
you still need to talk about naming, authentication, security,
remote access, and so on.  you do get a user interface, though,
and that is clearly a powerful starting point.

saying 'everything is a file' brings along with it everything to
do with files that we're already familiar with: naming, permissions,
security, and so on.  a really telling detail is that network file systems
are well understood, so if we make everything a file we immediately
have remote access to everything.  we don't have a user interface
to something, at least the way emacs has (editing etc.) but we do
have shell scripts and other ways to build things from basics.

'better' is a bad term when comparing system design.  the goals
of systems differ.  but i think that 'file' brings more powerful and
systems-capable ideas to the table than does 'edit buffer'.

-rob

Re: [9fans] emacs vs plan9

[David Tolpin]

Rob,

thanks a lot for the explanation. I think I understood it.

David

Re: [9fans] emacs vs plan9

[Kenji Okamoto]

> thanks a lot for the explanation. I think I understood it.

You should read Rob's comment with deepest attention
what he is really saying.  His word is always terse enough
for us. ☺

You must be careful this philosophy is not always been kept 
in the present Plan 9 distribution.  I don't know the reason,
however, I guess everything has done in the restriction of
time and man powers...  If you are a kind of programmer
who wants to invent something and has skills for it, you will 
find many interesting targets in the present Plan 9 dsitribution.
I'm aware of it, however, unfortunately, I have no such good
skill, sigh...   This must be a target for young skilled programmer,
I think.

Kenji

Re: [9fans] emacs vs plan9

[ron minnich]

interesting, I saw a talk from a bellcore dude in 1990 who was using emacs 
for distributed/parallel programming for telco stuff.

emacs is kind of a poor man's lisp machine for those who remember such. 

Emacs could run under plan 9, plan 9 can not run under emacs. I guess I 
think of one of these as a superset of the other, guess which one :-)

ron

Re: [9fans] emacs vs plan9

[boyd, rounin]

> emacs is kind of a poor man's lisp machine for those who remember such. 

that reminds me of the vi(1) [editor] turing machine.

> Emacs could run under plan 9, plan 9 can not run under emacs. I guess I 
> think of one of these as a superset of the other, guess which one :-)

could you port plan 9 to the vi(1) turing machine?

;)

Re: [9fans] emacs vs plan9

[Russ Cox]

> plan 9 can not run under emacs. 

are you sure?  plan 9 is typically pretty
easy to port to a new architecture.

Re: [9fans] emacs vs plan9

[ron minnich]

On Sat, 10 Apr 2004, Russ Cox wrote:

> are you sure?  plan 9 is typically pretty
> easy to port to a new architecture.

oh, all right, lack of existence does not prove you can't run plan 9 under 
emacs. 

ron

Re: [9fans] emacs vs plan9

[Keith Nash]

> GNU Emacs is an OS with multitasking, good API for parallel programming

GNU/Emacs is a great OS - I just wish it had a better text editor.

Re: [9fans] emacs vs plan9

[ron minnich]

Re that person I mentioned who did a distributed computing environment in 
emacs in 1990. Best quote:
"We don't do ODE or PDE in this environment, because we are the phone 
company, and we don't care". 

Great quote, although I am sure that from time to time the phone guys do 
an occasional ODE or PDE.

ron