> They say Plan9 is a step in the right direction, but rather than attacking a specific aspect of Plan9, they critique how the concepts were imported into Linux, which seems inherently silly to me.
Well, I've played with Plan9 several times, but I don't really feel like criticizing it, because I don't really know it that much. Only thing worth of criticizing is that it almost feels like objects, but not implemented fully.
I agree, that criticism of Plan9 would make more sense from philosophical point of view, but it wouldn't be authentic.
> However, both of those would still be the case for the system that they talk about. Let's talk about object orientated systems, which already exist, in limited (compared to the operating system) forms. You still have to pick up a manual to figure out what keys and functions are relevant to you. In Pharo (which is more or less the system they're after!), you can inspect objects that exist and the methods that exist for them -- however -- often, similarily-named functions do different things, which also requires reading a manual. In addition, using these tools as a first-time user, I was overwhelmed by the number of functions available, most of which I could only guess at what their purpose was. Pharo integrates the manual into the system, but the manual is still there!
Thats true, but you can also do a type-checking and infer a lot only from the proper naming of the objects and methods in the "Clean code" (book) style.
> Let's look at the windows hive database. That's a database of keys for values in the operating system. As a random developer, would you be able to open it and figure out what it does? I wouldn't.
One of the things that is not strongly captured in this article and which I since consider increasingly important is ability to use reflection on the system. Database that you can't open and figure out what it does is not worth using.
Oberon is on my todolist, Inferon is new for me.
> They say Plan9 is a step in the right direction, but rather than attacking a specific aspect of Plan9, they critique how the concepts were imported into Linux, which seems inherently silly to me.
Well, I've played with Plan9 several times, but I don't really feel like criticizing it, because I don't really know it that much. Only thing worth of criticizing is that it almost feels like objects, but not implemented fully.
I agree, that criticism of Plan9 would make more sense from philosophical point of view, but it wouldn't be authentic.
> However, both of those would still be the case for the system that they talk about. Let's talk about object orientated systems, which already exist, in limited (compared to the operating system) forms. You still have to pick up a manual to figure out what keys and functions are relevant to you. In Pharo (which is more or less the system they're after!), you can inspect objects that exist and the methods that exist for them -- however -- often, similarily-named functions do different things, which also requires reading a manual. In addition, using these tools as a first-time user, I was overwhelmed by the number of functions available, most of which I could only guess at what their purpose was. Pharo integrates the manual into the system, but the manual is still there!
Thats true, but you can also do a type-checking and infer a lot only from the proper naming of the objects and methods in the "Clean code" (book) style.
> Let's look at the windows hive database. That's a database of keys for values in the operating system. As a random developer, would you be able to open it and figure out what it does? I wouldn't.
One of the things that is not strongly captured in this article and which I since consider increasingly important is ability to use reflection on the system. Database that you can't open and figure out what it does is not worth using.