1 Sep
2018
1 Sep
'18
3:56 a.m.
Not completely on-topic, in my opinion one of the reasons Plan9 failed
was the fact that it presented itself overly idealistic, occasionally
sacrificing usability -- maybe it's because of coming from a Unix system
like Berkeley or IRIX, in which case, I think Brian Kernighan said, "if
you'll think of it as Unix, you'll often be frustrated because something
doesn't exist or works differently." On the one hand the `cat -v` and
some other concerns (like columnated ls(1) output) are valid, and very
well understood. On the other -- lack of find(1), shell history, and
vi are not. Well, to me at least. Both acme and sam seem to have found
its fanbase.
Note, when I'm saying failed I mean commercially. As a research
operating system, or, dare I say, esoteric, because in some way it was
and still is esoteric, it succeeded as none of the others, with its
impact going through this day.
--
caóc