Somehow a particular problem with a particular application
has degenerated into a rather unfair generalization of the
whole system:
> Reading about Plan 9, I was quite excited to install it. I was quite
> excited when I first booted and ran it, too. But I distinctly felt my
> heart sink a little the first time it hung. Since then, I've browsed
> some of the OS source code and, having done that, I came to understand
> why the system was so buggy. The core applications appear to be written
> in a style of C programming reminiscent of the dawn of UNIX. While the
> operating system architecture is BEAUTIFULLY designed (with the
> exception, perhaps of that fossil/conf gotcha!), the C code used to
> implement it doesn't seem to take advantage of any of the programming
> paradigms that have emerged in the intervening 30 years...
It would help the conversation if you described what these
new paradigms are. For instance, Plan 9 does not have any
code that's built upon any sort of functional programming
language. But again, that's not necessary. What practices
has everyone here missed, which would turn Plan 9 code
into gold? The argument seems a bit pretentious.
> Getting Plan 9 code to crash is almost too easy:
>
> term% mkdir trashdir && cd trashdir && mkdir x
> term% touch `{i=0; while (test $i -lt 128) { echo -n abcdefghijklmnop;
> i=`{echo $i+1|hoc} } }
> term% cp abc* abc* x
> # watch the cp executable suicide
> # now, make SURE there's nothing in this rio window that you want to keep...
> term% rm abc*
> # watch the rio window go bye bye!
Sorry, this does not crash any Plan 9 code on my system.
How much data globbing should handle is a matter of practicality.
When rc dies, the rio window closes.
ak
