Using your theories, please explain why Lisp and Plan 9 both hover around
the same level of popularity (i.e., not very, but not dead either).
I don't think I can say anything in that respect that cannot either be
easily refuted or greatly improved upon by someone already reading this
list and just too busy with their own stuff to post. Some of them
explicitly avoid feeding the troll (that I be, supposedly).
Anyway, here's what I think: Plan 9 and LISP are different, evolutionarily.
LISP seems to me like a downsized reptile that has survived and been forced
to exist in the shadow of mammals after the Mesozoic while Plan 9 looks
more like a lemur. A rather recently developed mammal driven into a small
area by its close kin from a common ancestor.
And one primary note: I have come to understand, in part thanks to this
very list, that popularity isn't really a good measure of merit for
computer stuff but you asked about popularity so I'll try to focus on that.
(Case in point, there's a lot I read about on this list that I don't think
I'd hear about in a lifetime, and this isn't a popular list.)
**********
LISP evolved in a parallel path to the line of languages that descended
from ALGOL. It represented/represents a programming paradigm--whose
significance is beyond me but visible to CS people--and it used to also
embody an application area. That application area, at the time, overlapped
with the ambitions of some of the best experts in computation. LISP gained
momentum, became an academic staple, was the pride and joy of world's best
CS/CE departments. The application area got hit but the programming
paradigm was strong as before.
The paradigm has scientific value--which is again beyond me but I trust CS
people on that--so it continues to be taught at world's best CS/CE
departments and to up-and-coming programmers and future computer
scientists. SICP is witness to that. In the academy, LISP will live on as
long as the paradigm it's attached to lives on and is deemed significant.
Those same people who are educated in some dialect of LISP, as well as
other languages, found businesses and apply their knowledge; occasionally,
by way of their training in LISP. For whatever reason they see merit in it
that many self-educated programmers or those trained at lesser institutions
don't. Obviously, there aren't that many top CS/CE departments and those
with founder status or strongly influences by founder institutions are
still fewer. Hence, LISP's living dead state: "popularity" among the elite.
Mind you, the natural divide between the two groups can sometimes be a
cause of resentment and get non-LISP people badmouthing it.
**********
Plan 9, on the other hand, was supposed to be a drop-in successor to
UNIX--a natural step forward. It was supposed to satisfy long-time UNIX
users by deceiving them with a similar-looking toolset while implementing a
large change of philosophy whose impact would only become clear after
(previous) UNIX users had already settled in. The factors that kept it from
actually replacing UNIX everywhere are many.
One factor was timing. It reached various tiers of "ignorant masses" when
not one but multiple possible continuations of UNIX, all of them FOSS, had
already gained foothold (GNU/Linux and *BSD).
The other factor was its overly complex arrangement compared to the mundane
purposes of lowly creatures more or less like me. I have tried arguing why
Plan 9 as it is is a hassle on desktop systems and have been met with
criticism that mostly targeted my lack of computer aptitude in general
rather than my argument. I stressed what I termed "conceptual complexity"
of Plan 9's model of how things should be and the lack of _any_ user
friendly, albeit sane, abstraction on top of that complexity.
A third, more important, factor is that it was advocated to people who
probably couldn't understand how Plan 9 would serve them better than things
they heard of more regularly, where was this new thing's edge that
justified the cost of its adoption. I for one am still at a loss on that
matter. As a hobbyist, I lurk, and occasionally--they say--troll, around
here but I'm not keeping my huge media collection on a Plan 9 installation
or using Acme for entering multi-lingual (up to three languages until a
while ago, four recently) text. Either task would be extremely cumbersome
to do on Plan 9 (and this really has little to do with the OS itself). In
short, I won't be doing Plan 9 because it's Plan 9. I, and most of the
lowly ones, need further justification that either hasn't been presented or
is way above my, or our, head.
The fourth factor I can think of is Plan 9's owners' attitude towards it. I
once dared go as far as saying it was actually "jettisoned." For reasons
that are beyond me Plan 9 isn't seeing much attention from Bell Labs or its
creators. It currently seems to lack the Benevolent Dictator for Life
figure many FOSS projects have. The overall air around it is one of
dereliction even if it is in fact being actively worked on behind the
scenes. Whether this is desired is again beyond me.
As a final note I think I should draw your attention to Linux's and *BSD's
path of ascendancy. All of these OSs seem to have consecutively attracted
distinct groups of users: serious programmers/contributors/researchers,
startups, the pleb (that's my kind), and corporate users--in that specific
order. Plan 9 seems to have stopped at stage 2 (startups), or maybe it's
just progressing and I am unaware of the progress. Regardless, attracting
the pleb seems to be the key to entering corporate user market and
widespread popularity, i.e. the stage where corporations, hoping to win the
pleb or higher pleb (industries and businesses), are willing to sponsor
(read: bribe) universities, students, and their own R&D departments in
teaching, learning, and furthering the new thing's cause.
**********
I must stress again these are all my impressions; hallucinations, if you
will.
--On Saturday, September 05, 2009 13:30 -0600 Daniel Lyons
<fus...@storytotell.org> wrote:
Eris,
Using your theories, please explain why Lisp and Plan 9 both hover around
the same level of popularity (i.e., not very, but not dead either).
—
Daniel Lyons
