I think, though, that one of the vastly underestimated aspects of Plan 9/9front is its simplified C.
AIUI one of the biggest differences is that a file is not allowed to `#include` anything that has already been #included in a parent project. You are not allowed to nest #includes.
The result is vastly reduced compile times. I have read claims of over 1000x fewer lines of code going through the compiler.
(Sure, disk caching helps a lot, but it still has to go through CPU.)
Cleaning up a codebase is a massive PITA but it's a one-time job and I have read comments that once you learn this, it quickly becomes habit.
Imagine if that was put into C29 as an advisory.
Decades and centuries of compute-time saved.
This is standard in Go, which is of course Pike's more recent baby.
ANSI C let you get away with this, which sounds like one of the more epic mistakes:
> Unofficial development for the system also continues on the 9front fork, where active contributors provide monthly builds and new functionality. So far, the 9front fork has provided the system Wi-Fi drivers, audio drivers, USB support and built-in game emulator, along with other features.
MisterTea 12 minutes ago [-]
To be fair drivers for all that existed already but support was very very narrow in terms of variety. e.g. there was wifi support for like one or two cards but handled on a per card basis - kinda hacky. 9front now has a clean portable wifi interface that spans all the architectures so the Pi and PC have the same wifi infrastructure despite having different interfaces and chips. Same with PCI, it was refactored to be portable among all supported platforms, e.g. the Pi 4 and PC.
ricardobeat 2 hours ago [-]
I like this section included in the release PDF:
0.1.3 − Is Plan 9 a cult run by scam artists?
From a newcomer's perspective, it feels like dealing with a cult run by scam artists. It seems someone wants to profit from me by selling books on Amazon, like a multi-level marketing group. People say others here are on a spectrum, but it feels more like psychosis, with a loss of contact with reality. I really feel like I'm being gaslighted. I might seem like a troll, but you don't understand how you appear to others.
ladax72707 1 hours ago [-]
lol
BSDobelix 2 hours ago [-]
Why not research it yourself instead of asking others? Am I the only one who thinks this is becoming increasingly common?
Cthulhu_ 1 hours ago [-]
No, this kind of comment and the "I misread it as xyz" / "I thought this was about abc" comments are getting really annoying.
1. Search engines, LLMs and the homepages of these sites are right there
2. Why would you announce your first thoughts to the world instead of actually engage with what was posted in the right context?
drcongo 56 minutes ago [-]
In defence of parent, I clicked around through several pages and still couldn't work it out. The image on the linked page made me think it was a game.
znpy 14 minutes ago [-]
> Am I the only one who thinks this is becoming increasingly common?
Yeah, and it’s an awful attitude.
Honest questions are hardly ever an issue.
Suzuran 1 hours ago [-]
"We" don't research it ourselves because we are increasingly taught that we are either too stupid to conduct our own research or not qualified to understand the results, and we must rely on someone else who represents a position of authority. Preferably politicians/influencers/marketing departments/AI models/etc. which can then direct us to make purchasing decisions of benefit to our masters.
perching_aix 54 minutes ago [-]
Society is hierarchical, and there are people who are closer to various fires, and thus do have more authoritative insight, than others.
I don't see merit to discounting this, even though cheap deflections to authority do bother me too.
Suzuran 16 minutes ago [-]
The problem is not that society is hierarchical, the problem is that position in the hierarchy rarely maps to expertise or trustworthiness. Instead it usually maps to whoever is best at exploiting and then destroying others to raise their position in the hierarchy.
Edit for clarity: The biggest part of the "You're too stupid..." thing I mentioned is that we are being led to believe we can't even determine who is and isn't credible in any given field, so we must solicit claimed authority and then blindly obey whoever shows up first. Sometimes this solicitation is in the form of a post, but increasingly it's an AI-generated "web" search response where the index/training data has been torqued to direct people toward economic outcomes desired by the AI/search engine's owners.
https://analognowhere.com/_/tcrxsm/
This is what Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson did to fix the faults in the Unix design.
Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and all the other FOSS Unix-like OSes are community recreations of the flawed AT&T Unix.
9front is the continuation of the OS that came next.
Recently, Pike commented that he designed Plan 9 so he could build the windowing system he wanted. (edit: oops, link) https://9fans.topicbox.com/groups/9fans/T4fec171fec7e3845-M2...
"Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here"
I think, though, that one of the vastly underestimated aspects of Plan 9/9front is its simplified C.
AIUI one of the biggest differences is that a file is not allowed to `#include` anything that has already been #included in a parent project. You are not allowed to nest #includes.
The result is vastly reduced compile times. I have read claims of over 1000x fewer lines of code going through the compiler.
(Sure, disk caching helps a lot, but it still has to go through CPU.)
Cleaning up a codebase is a massive PITA but it's a one-time job and I have read comments that once you learn this, it quickly becomes habit.
Imagine if that was put into C29 as an advisory.
Decades and centuries of compute-time saved.
This is standard in Go, which is of course Pike's more recent baby.
ANSI C let you get away with this, which sounds like one of the more epic mistakes:
https://go.dev/talks/2012/splash.article#TOC_5.
> Unofficial development for the system also continues on the 9front fork, where active contributors provide monthly builds and new functionality. So far, the 9front fork has provided the system Wi-Fi drivers, audio drivers, USB support and built-in game emulator, along with other features.
1. Search engines, LLMs and the homepages of these sites are right there
2. Why would you announce your first thoughts to the world instead of actually engage with what was posted in the right context?
Yeah, and it’s an awful attitude.
Honest questions are hardly ever an issue.
I don't see merit to discounting this, even though cheap deflections to authority do bother me too.
Edit for clarity: The biggest part of the "You're too stupid..." thing I mentioned is that we are being led to believe we can't even determine who is and isn't credible in any given field, so we must solicit claimed authority and then blindly obey whoever shows up first. Sometimes this solicitation is in the form of a post, but increasingly it's an AI-generated "web" search response where the index/training data has been torqued to direct people toward economic outcomes desired by the AI/search engine's owners.