On Monday, January 30, 2023, Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Jan 30, 2023 at 10:45 AM Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com> wrote:
> > 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.
>
> Some would argue that's not a mistake. How else do we innovate if
> we're just incrementally polishing what's come before?


I would argue that Linux actually did a lot of things differently. It tried
to conform to POSIX, but still there were a lof of fresh ideas that
actually took off.

It was not possible in the free BSD world which inherited much more from
the old Unix world.


> > 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?
>
> People tried to extend C to do the things that Rust does and it didn't
> work.


Smells like C++ to me. Rust in essence is a re-implementation of C++ not C.
It tries to pack as much features as it possibly can.

I don't know of any other language that throughout the years remained as
pure and minimal as C. (maybe Forth).


>
> > 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.
>
> Plan 9, as a research system, was an experiment in doing things
> differently. As a research system, it was remarkably influential: a
> lot of the ideas made it into e.g. Linux. Imitation is the most
> sincere form of flattery. As a production system, people just wanted
> Linux. There was a time when people wanted to try out new ideas; oh
> well.


Linux came out in the right place at the right time, right around the time
when the Internet really became a cyberspace spanning the whole globe.
Finland was first connected to the Internet in 1989. Linus bought his first
386DX33 in January 1991.

To me Linux represented a revolution in computing. It built on the
shoulders of Unix forefathers but at the same time was a breath of fresh
air in the Unix space. Young people at the time wanted that. That's why it
became so wildly popular. It was a completely free, idealistic worldwide
movement. It brought together a diverse group of people: university Unix
programmers, home computer enthusiasts and demoscene hackers who just
recently replaced their 8-bit C64's and Atari's with fresh 386-based PCs,
young security hackers who watched too much War Games, etc. It was a very
fresh movement at the time.

--Andy