Re: [9fans] Mars Needs Women (was Re: TeX: hurrah!)

["Federico G. Benavento" <benavento@gmail.com>]

too long for me to read, could you summarize in 3 lines?

On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 8:58 PM, Corey <corey@bitworthy.net> wrote:
>
> The following is not a troll. (the subject is for the sake of humor only)
>
> On Friday 16 April 2010 11:10:28 Patrick Kelly wrote:
>> Have you look at what Plan 9 has done? I would hardly go to say we are
>> reactive. Every other system has reacted to what Plan 9 has done, not the
>> other way around.
>>
>
> However, "what Plan 9 has done"... occurred many years ago.
>
> But what has it done _lately_?  (that's an honest question, not a
> troll)
>
> In the mean time, that horrible, over-complex, fugly bloated mess that -
> according to 9fans apparently - represents the vast majority of software
> (and developers)  in the world... is in fact... _hugely_ prolific, and under
> constant development and experimentation: generating untold riches in
> wealth in a great number of industries and constantly increasing user and
> developer productivity via a rich plethora of options in programming
> languages, conceptual models, applications, and higher-level abstractions.
> Messy, with high levels of noise-to-signal - certainly... but absolutely,
> astoundingly productive and in constant motion.
>
> While the radically simple, perfectly sound Plan 9 continues to focus
> primarily at being an IDE and file server... for C programmers... of an
> obscure/alien dialect... because POSIX sucks, and UNIX sucks, and all
> Standards suck, and all other languages besides C (and rc) suck, and OOP
> sucks, and amateurs suck, and higher level abstractions suck, and gui buttons
> and widgets suck, and keyboard shortcuts suck, and the web sucks, and larger
> scale community-driven collaboration sucks... etc. etc. ad infinitum. Clean,
> certainly... but in near/relative stasis as well.
>
> When "less is more" degenerates into "nothing is better than something"
> (and "get out of my yard!")...  indicates (to me) that the community involved
> could possibly bring in some outside air. (I'm referring to the abstract
> community - not each individual, who I'm sure all get plenty of fresh air).
> It would be great if 9fans wasn't simply a place where people congregate
> partially as means to get their grognard on in full effect mode  - or
> alternately, if there was a place for 9fans where they could speculate
> productively on greenfield ideas regarding experimental new directions that
> alternative Plan 9 _based_ operating systems might be well suited towards.
>
> But here on 9fans, even the basic process of community meta-cognition ends
> in that all too familiar "flame drizzle".
>
> To be honest, it's a shame that Plan 9 appears, for whatever reasons, to
> be firmly entrenched within the context of a particular school of C systems
> programming. It seems clear that Plan 9's core model has got a
> helluvalot more to offer than rio + acme + kencc and friends... but if Glenda
> doesn't get the chance to produce further offspring, that theory will never be
> fully realized.
>
> So as to not merely "complain", I'll venture some obvious ideas:
>
> Perhaps a new mailing list - to act as a lightening rod for "non-canon" Plan 9
> ideas, discussion and projects.
>
> Perhaps a linguistic convention to help mitigate the dichotomy (and perpetual
> conflict) that occurs between two camps of thought regarding the official
> standard Plan 9 distribution. The conflict seems to arise due to differring
> ideas of just what 'Plan 9' is... there appears to be an unnecessary friction
> between keeping Plan 9 mostly as it _is_, and making Plan 9 something
> _different_ than it currently is.
>
> In other words, there's a battle between "Plan 9 same" and "Plan 9 different"
> - as though There Can Only Be One. But if "Plan 9 different" was called, say,
> Plan X instead of Plan 9... then perhaps the "Plan 9 same" folks wouldn't feel
> that Plan 9 proper was in constant jeopardy of becoming polluted/diluted.
>
> The Plan 9ers have "successfully" prevented the Plan Xers from "encroaching",
> but it's the Plan Xers who are going to find new and interesting expressions
> of a Plan 9 based operating system, however in order to bootstrap, the Plan
> Xers need the experience and insights of the Plan 9ers... yet there's an
> antagonistic conundrum that prevents the two perspectives from peering.
>
> Is any of this even worth discussing? Or is this just another example of
> "talk, talk, talk" from yet another troll who has no intention of actually
> doing something productive?
>
>
> Kind regards
>
>



-- 
Federico G. Benavento