Re: [9fans] acme design (long)

[Russ Cox <russcox@gmail.com>]

You're not arguing about Acme vs. Oberon.
You're arguing about Plan 9 vs. Oberon.

As Rob said a few days ago, no one sat down and
said "let's build a system that's not like Unix", and
similarly no one set out to build a "non-Oberon".

Plan 9 and Oberon are both clean systems built
around simple (but different) models of how computing
resources should be presented.  They each have
their advantages and disadvantages.

Once you accept that, it's easy to see that Acme is,
as Rob said in the paper, inspired by the Oberon
look and feel but adapted to the Plan 9 model instead
of the Oberon one:

    Acme is a new program, a combined window system,
    editor, and shell, that applies some of the ideas 
    distilled by Oberon.  Where Oberon uses objects
    and modules within a programming language (also
    called Oberon), Acme uses files and commands
    within an existing operating system (Plan 9).

There's not much point in answering any of the
specifics of your "debate" emails.  You're arguing
about the relative merits of apples and oranges.
Good luck.

Russ