Groups | Search | Server Info | Keyboard shortcuts | Login | Register [http] [https] [nntp] [nntps]

Groups > alt.folklore.computers > #234664

Re: Don Norman: The Truth About Unix

Show all headers | View raw

In article <slrn10tq1pr.467.anthk@openbsd.home>,
Anthk  <anthk@disroot.org> wrote:
>On 2026-01-27, Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote:
>> [snip]
>> The truth about Unix: The user interface is horrid
>> Donald A. Norman
>> Department of Psychology and Program in Cognitive Science
>> Center for Human Information Processing
>> University of California, San Diego
>> La Jolla, California 92093
>>
>> [snip 500+ lines of quoted text]
>
>9front tried to fix consistency on commands, everything it's a file (yes,
>no ioctls), and far less syscalls.
>
>Plan9/9front killed Unix for the good.

It is true that the number of system calls Plan 9 exposes is
smaller than anything in the Unix family, and there is no
`ioctl`.  But regardless of that, the system Plan 9 interface is
deceptively wide: each driver synthesizes a small filesystem
for userspace programs to interact with it, and usually exposes
a `ctl` file that takes free-form text to direct a device or
other program to do something; these must be parsed, in the
kernel.  Fortunately, there are some library routines to help
with this.  But as a result, the system interface is arguably
less coherent than `ioctl`.

Further, sadly the handling of writes to those devices is widely
inconsistent and occasionally fragile: does the command need to
be terminated with a newline?  If not, will it tolerate a
newline if one is at the end of the string?  What if the string
is broken into two writes (Plan 9's `echo` allocates in order to
accumulate its arguments into a single buffer that is emitted
with a single `write` call for a reason).  This was all fine for
a research system (which is what Plan 9 was and mostly still is,
and as such it was amazingly successful: many of its ideas are
still making it into production systems now).  Generally, having
bespoke parsers in the kernel isn't the greatest thing, though
the same is true of `ioctl` in Unix, of course.

Plan 9 had a lot of great ideas (and still does).  It was my
primary environment for several years, and I still run it at
home; indeed, I was on a technical advisory committee call for
it yesterday.  But one should be careful of understanding its
limitations, which are many.

One can read more about Plan 9 in a number of places.  I humbly
offer up my own words here:
https://gajendra.net/2016/05/plan9part1

	- Dan C.

Back to alt.folklore.computers | Previous | Next — Previous in thread | Next in thread | Find similar

Thread

Re: Don Norman: The Truth About Unix Anthk <anthk@disroot.org> - 2026-04-15 06:48 +0000
  Re: Don Norman: The Truth About Unix cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2026-04-15 11:24 +0000
    Re: Don Norman: The Truth About Unix scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2026-04-15 15:47 +0000
      Re: Don Norman: The Truth About Unix cross@spitfire.i.gajendra.net (Dan Cross) - 2026-04-15 16:11 +0000
  Re: Don Norman: The Truth About Unix Lawrence D’Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> - 2026-04-15 22:10 +0000

csiph-web