From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.0 required=5.0 tests=MAILING_LIST_MULTI autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 11692 invoked from network); 30 Jan 2023 15:46:21 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (50.116.15.146) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 30 Jan 2023 15:46:21 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [IPv6:::1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 64F1D425DE; Tue, 31 Jan 2023 01:45:59 +1000 (AEST) Received: from mcvoy.com (mcvoy.com [192.169.23.250]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id EFA7E425DD for ; Tue, 31 Jan 2023 01:45:55 +1000 (AEST) Received: by mcvoy.com (Postfix, from userid 3546) id 8B34F35E91A; Mon, 30 Jan 2023 07:45:55 -0800 (PST) Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2023 07:45:55 -0800 From: Larry McVoy To: Dan Cross Message-ID: <20230130154555.GF12306@mcvoy.com> References: <202301300750.30U7oQTh013304@freefriends.org> <20230130150219.GD12306@mcvoy.com> <20230130152703.GE12306@mcvoy.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.24 (2015-08-30) Message-ID-Hash: 6E7NTO4LC26I6OURTGECJVG457RYC6RN X-Message-ID-Hash: 6E7NTO4LC26I6OURTGECJVG457RYC6RN X-MailFrom: lm@mcvoy.com X-Mailman-Rule-Misses: dmarc-mitigation; no-senders; approved; emergency; loop; banned-address; member-moderation; header-match-tuhs.tuhs.org-0; nonmember-moderation; administrivia; implicit-dest; max-recipients; max-size; news-moderation; no-subject; digests; suspicious-header CC: tuhs@tuhs.org X-Mailman-Version: 3.3.6b1 Precedence: list Subject: [TUHS] Re: FD 2 List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list Archived-At: List-Archive: List-Help: List-Owner: List-Post: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: On Mon, Jan 30, 2023 at 10:35:25AM -0500, Dan Cross wrote: > Plan 9 was different, and a lot of people who were familiar with Unix > didn't like that, and were not interested in trying out a different > way if it meant that they couldn't bring their existing mental models > and workflows into the new environment unchanged. > > At one point it struck me that Plan 9 didn't succeed as a widespread > replacement for Unix/Linux because it was bad or incapable, but > rather, because people wanted Linux, and not plan9. Many people make that mistake. New stuff instead of extend old stuff. Look at programming languages for instance. We had C, it was pretty simple to understand, but people wanted more stuff. So now we have things like Rust that is pretty much completely different. Could we not have extended C to do what Rust does? Why do we need an entirely different syntax to say the same things? Seems like Plan 9 fell into that trap. When you invalidate all of the existing knowledge that people have, that creates a barrier to entry. As you said, people don't want to give up their mental model when that model works. They'll only give it up when there is at least a factor of 2 improvement that they care about. These days it feels like people are stuck enough that they want a factor of 10.