amolitor@eagle.wesleyan.edu (04/11/91)
In article <15746@smoke.brl.mil>, gwyn@smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn) writes: > Don't forget another possibility, which is lack of integration in their > design. What makes systems like the original UNIX and Plan 9 so slick > is the care that is put into conceptual integration; systems that are > "designed" with much less care tend to end up supporting several distinct > features where one properly-designed facility would have sufficed. In the case of the two mentioned systems, I think you can pinpoint more exactly the (or at least, a) reason for their excellence. The authors were (and are, I suppose) fearless about *ripping* *code* *out*. If something or other was a bad idea, it was thrown away (in the early days) rather than being supported through version 19.54. This is, of course, vastly easier to do when the product has not been released to the public. Andrew