Re: [9fans] cpu server

[a@9srv.net]

wow, charles. excelent write-up. just a few additions i'm
compelled to make, based on recent experience and first impressions.

when i was first exposed to plan 9, i was a unix admin. the very
first thing that struck me about it was /lib/ndb. plan 9 was
build with networks in mind, and as such the handling of them is so
far superior to, well, everything else as to be operating at a
different level entirely. no more changing host names in 3-5
different places, no more worrying about if my dns data was synched
with my arp data and so on. designing the system around the idea of
being network-centric meant dealing with and organizing a network
was simple, even when not making use of the advanced networking
capabilities the system presents. the small stuff falls out of doing
doing the big stuff right.

a few days later i had my second big "whoa" moment with plan 9 while
while looking at aux/listen. tcp7 and tcp9 just blew my mind. i
could write network listeners! in like three lines!!! wereas
something like xinetd is (arguably; or not) an incremental step up
from inetd on modern unix systems, aux/listen is something else
entirely. i've written cross-protocol port forwarding in two
lines of shell code. the amount of times since then that i've
wished for aux/listen on whatever unix i was working on at the
time is beyond number. it's not just incremental; it's totally
different. and it works stand-alone, too.

again: the small stuff falls out of doing the big stuff right.

and plan 9 does the big stuff right.
ア