On 8/11/06, erik quanstrom <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
*not* providing a library for these things is the key. for example, page doesn't link against the jpeg library. it just runs jpg. nedmail doesn't link against the mime library, it uses upas/fs and marshal.
I guess my point is it's just one abstraction that needs to be filled in to get the same expressive behavior as you get by making a 9P capable server for connecting to a given resource. Then you get the "same I/O commands you'd use..." as the quoted paragraph states. If they're saying TCL is somehow deeper than OOP, I didn't absorb that information from the copied paragraph. OOP systems are very open-ended, they're just terribly "close topped" (which is how we end up with things like Aspect Oriented Programming so you can cross-cut functionality into an existing system rather than just extending and overriding.)
if plan 9 provided fancy library interfaces for such things, we might be temted by the sirens "shared libraries" and "oop languages".
Right but I'm not sure what that had to do with TCL? ;-). In some ways having a binary you can call from another process *is* a kind of "shared library" already. Just as the kernel is a shared library of sorts.... but yeah I understand your point. Plan 9's abstractions for doing these things in the OS itself are (for the lack of a better word at this early hour for me) "freakin' badass!". As a result I can far more with a shell, which is a safer programming environment in terms of resource management I think, than I can in pretty much any other programming language. If people thought Unix is a good programming environment, they really should give Plan 9 a try.
- erik On Fri Aug 11 02:22:13 CDT 2006, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > On 8/10/06, Ronald G Minnich <[email protected]> wrote: > > "Sure, some other languages have libraries for accessing web or ftp > > sites, or looking inside zip files. But how many provide an open ended > > and extensible system that allows you to access any such resource using > > the same I/O commands you'd use with regular disk files?" > > > > C++ iostreams perhaps? I've got one for sockets, pipes etc... Now > that's not the same as FTP sites and zip files, but it could be done. > Then you can use the same iterators and algorithms to glue it all > together. In fact, I think I saw a zlibstream once. I was thinking > of writing one. > > It's done via a blend of template generic programming and OOP. Too > bad C++ quickly becomes quite confusing and is very easy to abuse and > make difficult to maintain (probably an understatement). > > Plan 9 gives me a lot of that power right at the shell because the OS > multiplexes 9P so well. > > > > hmm. in the language library? Well, I guess if that's all you can do ... > > but this is a really odd quote. > > > > And I actually like tcl ... > > > > ron
