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

[Iruata Souza <iru.muzgo@gmail.com>]

On Sat, Apr 17, 2010 at 3:49 AM, Corey <corey@bitworthy.net> wrote:
> On Friday 16 April 2010 21:29:44 lucio@proxima.alt.za wrote:
>> > Messy, with high levels of noise-to-signal - certainly... but absolutely,
>> > astoundingly productive and in constant motion.
>>
>> In my opinion, most of the output from the Posix developers is trash.
>> It's the equivalent of a cancer, polluting the body with poisons.
>> Somewhere in the mix there will certainly be something of value, but
>> it is well hidden by the bulk of the production.  The few jewels are
>> also corrupted by the manner in which they need to be delivered,
>> namely the autoconf stuff.
>>
>
> Understood.  Though I don't share your opinion quite to the degree that
> you expressed. Additionally, I have no desire to debate subjective
> perspectives of the overall net usefulness of POSIX, let alone autoconf -
> everyone, of course, has their opinions and experiences, favorable or
> otherwise.
>
>> If you consider things more objectively you will also acknowledge that
>> very little new is being created, but rather many old things are being
>> "improved" upon (regurgitated) in manners that consume more and more
>> computing cycles and deliver less and less performance.
>>
>
> Again, I'd prefer to not to debate the ratio of good software vs. trashy
> software, or to debate what's new and useful vs. merely regurgitated and
> worsened. Though it's certainly a perfectly interesting topic.
>
>> Consider further the following: porting GCC/G++ to a new platform
>> rather than Linux is almost inconceivable, porting more and more Linux
>> software to a compiler suite other than GCC/G++ is equally
>> inconceivable.  If you can't see anything wrong with GCC's bloat, the
>> dead end it leads to, there is little reason to argue with you.
>>
>
> Finally, regarding this mention of gcc - the "Plan X" in my mind's eye
> would far prefer LLVM/Clang to gcc, for precisely the reasons you
> point out. (I've been considering the prospect of implementing a
> kencc dialect for the clang c front-end).
>
> (I'm using "Plan X" in the sense I mentioned in the original post - i.e.
> I'm _not_ suggesting that the official releases of Plan 9 proper should
> introduce the platform changes under discussion. "Plan X" means:
> any alternative expression of the Plan 9 operating system. Also, I'm
> using the phrase "my mind's eye", in order to stress that this is all just
> speculative, science-fiction)
>
> Regarding the POSIX situation - a "Plan X" of my mind's eye is not
> concerned with fighting that particular battle.
>
> The basic wild-eyed premise, is that an alternative Plan 9 distribution
> which "features" a native, more "POSIXy" approximation than APE, in
> addition to a native compiler that supported a larger number of languages
> and C dialects than 9c - would lead to a much more broadly comfortable
> environment for a greater number of general developers and users.
>
> The theory, is that the Plan 9 implementations of the following concepts:
>
> * 9P
> * mutable namespaces
> * union directories
> * ubiquitous fileservers
> * transparent distributed services
> * etc
>
> ... are simply - by far - much more important and practical to a greater
> number of people than these other prominent Plan 9  idioms:
>
> * radical frugal simplicity throughout the entire system
> * a stance against POSIX and other standards
> * a stance against alternate programming language paradigms
> * a strong bias towards a particular form of user interaction with the
> system (i.e. acme, rio, etc)
>
>
> Peace
>
>
>
>

still too long.