31 Jan
2023
31 Jan
'23
1:03 a.m.
On Mon, Jan 30, 2023 at 11:18 AM Larry McVoy <lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
On Mon, Jan 30, 2023 at 11:09:03AM -0500, Dan Cross
wrote:
Oh, I don't know. I think it's actually kind of important to see _why_
people didn't want to look deeper into plan9 (for example). The system
had a lot to offer, but you had to dig a bit to get into it; a lot of
folks never got that far. If it was really lack of job control, then
that's a shame.
- Dan C.
On Mon, Jan 30, 2023 at 10:45 AM Larry McVoy
<lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote:
I didn't say limit yourself to polishing, I said try and not invalidate
people's knowledge while innovating.
Too many people go down the path of doing things very differently and
they rationalize that they have to do it that way to innovate. That's
fine but it means it is going to be harder to get people to try your
new stuff.
The point I'm trying to make is that "different" is a higher barrier,
much, much higher, than "extend". People frequently ignore that and
that means other people ignore their work.
It is what it is, I doubt I'll convice anyone so I'll drop it. On Mon, Jan 30, 2023 at 10:35:25AM -0500, Dan
Cross wrote:
Some would argue that's not a mistake. How else do we innovate if
we're just incrementally polishing what's come before? Plan 9 was different, and a lot of people who
were familiar with Unix
didn't like that, and were not interested in trying out a different
way if it meant that they couldn't bring their existing mental models
and workflows into the new environment unchanged.
At one point it struck me that Plan 9 didn't succeed as a widespread
replacement for Unix/Linux because it was bad or incapable, but
rather, because people wanted Linux, and not plan9.
Many people make that mistake. New stuff instead of extend old stuff.