Re: [9fans] gnupg or pgp for plan9?

[uriel@cat-v.org]

>> It happens because engineers are too lazy or scared to try to
>> understand the code they are modifying, and a layer seems safer.  My
>> case was 3 years of 2 code teams.  Imagine 10 years of open-source-
>> like distributed development :-(
>
> your experience tallies with slide 24 from jerome saltzer's "coping
> with complexity":
>
>     Why aren't abstraction, modularity, hierarchy, and layers enough?
>     - First, you must understand what you are doing.
>     - It is easy to create abstractions; it is hard to discover the
> *right* abstraction.
>     - It is hard to change the abstractions later.
>     (ditto for modularity, hierarchy, and layers)

Thanks for the pointer, this are the most interesting slides I have
read in a long time.  Here is the PDF version in case someone has not
read them yet:

http://web.mit.edu/Saltzer/www/publications/Saltzerthumbnails.pdf

I'm starting to suspect that the more resources a software project
has, worse are the result.

Maybe that means that there is hope for Plan 9; while we barely
survive, the rest of the world with 10000 times more resources invests
all those resources in shooting themselves in the foot...  with XML
bullets, of course.

uriel