UNIX was a terrific workhorse for its time, but eventually the old nag needs to be put out to pasture. David Chisnall argues that it's time to retire UNIX in favor of modern systems with a lot more horsepower. "UNIX has a lot of strengths, but like any other design it's starting to show its age. Some of the points listed in this article apply less to some UNIX-like systems, some apply more."
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Member since:Ken Thompson was one of the major contributors to Plan9 as well as Rob Pike. Rob Pike as already expressed his feelings about UNIX. Ken too. They both think it sucks.
Where did they say that UNIX "sucks"? Your reasoning is flawed. Ken and Rob working on Plan9 doesn't imply that they think UNIX "sucks".
Do you think Kenneth would work on Plan9 if UNIX was any good?
Yes, I do. Just because they worked on Plan9 doesn't mean they think UNIX is no good. I can think of a very good reason why they would work on Plan9 regardless of there opinions of UNIX: Because they want to make something better.
Example 1: Paul Graham really likes Lisp a lot. If you have ever read any of his essays or heard any of his speeches, you would know this, yet Paul Graham is working on a language called Arc. This language is, in his opinion, going to be a better Lisp. As much as he likes Lisp, he feels, in retrospect, Lisp has some suboptimal design. By your reasoning, because Paul Graham is working on another language, he must think Lisp "sucks" and is no good.
Example 2: An author writes a story. Later, the author revises the story and rewrites it. Now, does the author think that the original story "sucked"? No, they wanted to improve the story, make it better. In fact its obvious they kind of like the story if they wrote a better version. They just wanted to fix the problems the older story had.
Now, Plan9 is very much a derivative of UNIX. It shares a lot of the ideas and philosophies of UNIX. Plan9 also fixes a lot of the problems that many people felt UNIX had. The fact that Plan9 shares so much in common with UNIX shows that the authors of Plan9 don't think UNIX "sucks" and is no good. It just demonstrates that they feel UNIX can be improved. (Who, in there right mind, would think that UNIX is perfect or even close to perfect?)
Don't think for a minute that just because somebody criticizes something that they think it "sucks" or is no good. I'm critical of various things in UNIX too, but I don't think that UNIX "sucks". I just feel that there are better ideas yet to be realized and we need to be exploring those.
Member since:In http://www.paulgraham.com/popular.html, he does say that Common Lisp sucks.
Member since:
2005-11-06
Ken Thompson was one of the major contributors to Plan9 as well as Rob Pike. Rob Pike as already expressed his feelings about UNIX. Ken too. They both think it sucks.
Do you think Kenneth would work on Plan9 if UNIX was any good?
Many things start being used by the industry before "ideal time". I think that UNIX is one of those things. Plan9 is the natural evolution of UNIX.
Smalltalk creator's Alan Kay also saw is language being used "before time" and he also expressed Smalltalk was no good and lacked some design evolution to make it more usable. Yet people used Smalltalk anyway.
Don't get me wrong... Smalltalk and UNIX are two fine products. But they are stuck in time not because the creators like them that way, but because the outside world doesn't like changing.