Comment by metafex | Hacker News Reader

Comment by metafex | Hacker News Reader

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> Yes, UNIX has a bunch of nice ideas, but that is all. Ouch, that actually hurts a little. Yes, the kernel team at Microsoft is the real deal, but I'll not go into that.

As to "a bunch of nice ideas", I'd suggest you take a look at the concepts that Plan 9 from Bell Labs brings to the table. The everything is a file concept there is something I wish would have taken over the more classic approach to devices, networking, etc. Want to open a remote shell on another server? Easy as opening a file handle. Accessing the CPU and running programs? Same story. Now if you call that just a nice idea, I rest my case ;-)

Microsoft even explored some of those concepts in their research OSes like Singularity and Midori. There has to be something about those ideas that they appeal even to MS, that's just my view though.

Quoting Rob Pike on his Slashdot interview:

We really are using a 1970s era operating system well past its sell-by date. We get a lot done, and we have fun, but let's face it, the fundamental design of Unix is older than many of the readers of Slashdot, while lots of different, great ideas about computing and networks have been developed in the last 30 years. Using Unix is the computing equivalent of listening only to music by David Cassidy.

There has to be some irony there, given the development tendencies of golang. :)

Not to mention programming languages in general.

We're still wrapping our heads around decades-old ideas. We can be sure software development is finally a mature field when we're unflinchingly using 100+-year-old constructs because they've withstood the test of time.

One of my favorite fields, DSP, leans on math from around the turn of the 20th century. Far from shameful, I consider that a win for mathematics.

I think the main reason why 'everything is a file' is so powerful is because it comes with a built in security model.

Plan 9 != UNIX

Yeah, I know, it's the unix concept thought further :)

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