[TUHS] FD 2

[Dan Cross]

On Mon, Jan 30, 2023 at 10:27 AM Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 30, 2023 at 10:16:25AM -0500, Dan Cross wrote:
> > On Mon, Jan 30, 2023 at 10:02 AM Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:
> > > On Mon, Jan 30, 2023 at 07:09:55PM +1100, Rob Pike wrote:
> > > > And then we have pttys, speaking of pitys.
> > >
> > > I'm not seeing how you do stuff like ssh into a remote system and have
> > > job control, etc, work without some sort of tty.
> >
> > You don't. But perhaps that model isn't super great.
> >
> > There was no job control on plan9 and I can't say I ever missed it. If
> > I needed another terminal, I just swept open another window. Job
> > control, even remote access a la SSH (or telnet, or rlogin), are a bit
> > of an historical accident. If, instead, my computing environment is
> > the set of shared resources I've imported into my system, then I don't
> > necessarily need something like that. The plan9 `cpu` command, for
> > access to a remote CPU server, conceptually brought the CPU server to
> > you, not the other way around.
> >
> > It was a very different model.
>
> $ vi foo.c
> hack, hack
> ^Z
> $ make
> test test test, broken
> $ fg
>
> Yes, I could do that in 2 different terminals but that mode of working
> is extremely useful, works when I don't have a windowing system, I'm
> on the console.
>
> Not having that model is a deal breaker for me, and I suspect a non
> trivial number of other people.

Yup. That's a way to work, and if you work with Unix, it's a common one.

Plan 9 was different, and a lot of people who were familiar with Unix
didn't like that, and were not interested in trying out a different
way if it meant that they couldn't bring their existing mental models
and workflows into the new environment unchanged. There was no `vi` on
plan9, either; well, there was, but it was a MIPS emulator, not a text
editor. But with the `acme` editor, your active text editor panes and
your terminal window were all part of the editor itself:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP1xVpMPn8M

At one point it struck me that Plan 9 didn't succeed as a widespread
replacement for Unix/Linux because it was bad or incapable, but
rather, because people wanted Linux, and not plan9.

        - Dan C.