I am sure you are correct, but, going back to 1990 or so, the number of people who tried both was probably not that different; it certainly includes me :-)
What made Python very difficult on Plan 9, ca 2008 on machines like Blue Gene, was the heavy use Python in HPC makes of .so files. It was one of the reasons Plan 9 had no future in HPC. The sum total of .so's were much larger than the memory, so being able to mmap, and hence fault in only needed pages, was a make or break issue. To make effective use of Python, nowadays, .so files, and hence mmap, are not optional. If your kernel can not support .so's, Python makes little sense. On Mon, Oct 5, 2026 at 4:51 PM Frank D. Engel, Jr. <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that the number of people who have > tried python is probably far more than 100,000 times the number of people > who have tried plan 9, otherwise the provided statistic wouldn't make any > sense. > > > On 10/5/26 12:33, ron minnich wrote: > > re this quote: "Python 2.5.1 used to be included with the 9front > distribution, not because anyone loved Python, but because it was required > by Mercurial (also loved by no one), which was required by Google Code > (which shut down in 2015). An abject lesson in expediency." > > Based on usage statistics, the number of people who love python is at > least 100,000 times larger than the number of people who love plan 9. > Same for mercurial: the number of *companies* using mercurial is roughly > 100 times larger than the number of *people* using Plan 9. In terms of > users, mercurial likely has 100,000 times as many users as Plan 9. > > So, perhaps that quote can be taken with a grain of salt. > > On Mon, Oct 5, 2026 at 8:46 AM <[email protected]> wrote: > >> I happened to find myself exploring this page: >> https://fqa.9front.org/appendixl.html, (..somewhat painful, ROFL, with >> my hard floors with nails sticking through them..) and came upon this: >> >> "Python 2.5.1 used to be included with the 9front distribution, not >> because anyone loved Python, but because it was required by Mercurial (also >> loved by no one), which was required by Google Code (which shut down in >> 2015). An abject lesson in expediency." >> >> I have been using mercurial for a project because a colleague requested a >> more sophisticated form of version control, and mercurial was the only one >> I couldn't find anybody hating on. So now, I'm curious: what's so bad >> about it? I assume this because plan9 has it's own method that is even >> simpler. And that that being the case, the reason why mercurial exists at >> all is the same as why more people don't use plan9. >> >> Same question for python. >> >> ..I distantly sense that I should clarify things a bit.. -> I have a >> large amount of python code from back when it was convenient, starting from >> when my os journey was at the stage of taking the daring leap from windows >> to linux. At the time, it was the only option, (from a certain point of >> view), and hasn't given me any trouble. I've attempted to get information >> on the relative speeds of c code and python code with numerical python, >> with inconclusive results. >> > *9fans <https://9fans.topicbox.com/latest>* / 9fans / see discussions > <https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans> + participants > <https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/members> + delivery options > <https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/subscription> Permalink > <https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/T760946500f0217e4-Me791699c0df6d5eac559528f> > > ------------------------------------------ 9fans: 9fans Permalink: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/T760946500f0217e4-Mf513788d091e5e472d181134 Delivery options: https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/subscription
