why are you flaming somebody who's offering reasonable opinions? >> Think Pascal: it is hardly the language of choice today, but the >> principles it enshrines have totally altered the programming language >> landscape. C is the utility version, and C++ and Java its obvious > > Surrrrre uhhh yeah whatever you say.... Or was it Algol?
this stands out as particularly worth of rebuttal. the labs were against types. but in the end even the labs adopted them. >> offsprings. Alef has been abandoned and Limbo remains a very >> specialised language, but they will also leave their mark. > > So does a dog pissing on a fire hydrant. perhaps you've forgotten that the thread library is a direct result of alef. >> [...], but in reality it is the philosophy >> behind Plan 9 that needs spreading: careful design, generalised >> objects, simplicity rather than bulk, etc. Not Rio or Acme, Fossil or >> Venti, but the environment in which they can thrive. The environment >> in which Mozilla is difficult to create so that simpler solutions can >> be sought. > > Mozilla didn't create the web. The web created Mozilla. either way, we're back to my point. linux &. al. are going a different way, which i don't feel is very fruitful. they are working from a different set of ideas. it's not that i (or unfairly we — i can't and wasn't speaking for the "plan 9 community") have an egotisitical desire to see plan 9's ideas take over the world. it's that i see problems that seem pretty straightforward to solve made difficult. with repetition, i feel this process erodes computing in general as there is no avoiding other platforms. these are tetonic forces. there's nothing directly to be done about them. so my point is like a bad poem. there's no "and then" part. - erik
