> Also all those languages are Cs in the same way BSD and Linux are UNIXs. Same family. You should have mentioned Haskell or APL instead.
But look! Even though those programming languages are in the same family, it was still worth starting over when they were made! Zig and C are incredibly similar languages, but Andrew Kelly didn’t try and convince the C standards committee to adopt his ideas. He just went and made Zig from scratch. And I’m glad he did! It would have taken decades to drag C in that direction - if it’s possible at all.
Another example: Khtml wasn’t based on Firefox (the big contemporary opensource browser). It was a new browser engine with new ideas. And the design was so good it was used as the basis of Chrome.
Don’t get me wrong - I think it’s great that plan9 experiments did eventually make it back into Linux. But doing the experiments in a separate kernel / OS still makes a lot of sense to me. Old, established technology like linux, FreeBSD, the C programming language, or something like the HTTP spec all need to move slowly because they’re depended on by so many people and companies. That is anathema to wild, new ideas.
But look! Even though those programming languages are in the same family, it was still worth starting over when they were made! Zig and C are incredibly similar languages, but Andrew Kelly didn’t try and convince the C standards committee to adopt his ideas. He just went and made Zig from scratch. And I’m glad he did! It would have taken decades to drag C in that direction - if it’s possible at all.
Another example: Khtml wasn’t based on Firefox (the big contemporary opensource browser). It was a new browser engine with new ideas. And the design was so good it was used as the basis of Chrome.
Don’t get me wrong - I think it’s great that plan9 experiments did eventually make it back into Linux. But doing the experiments in a separate kernel / OS still makes a lot of sense to me. Old, established technology like linux, FreeBSD, the C programming language, or something like the HTTP spec all need to move slowly because they’re depended on by so many people and companies. That is anathema to wild, new ideas.