Tue Mar 2 15:57:19 EST 2010

Plan 9 -> Alef -> {C Threads, Limbo} -> Go

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I am reading the paper describing Plan 9:

http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/9.html

And  in the section talking about "Parallel Programming", it men-
tions that instead of C, one should use "Alef" to write  parallel
programs.  I  had heard of this before, but decided to look it up
on WP.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alef_(programming_language)

And, interestingly it not only says that  Alef  basically  failed
for  maintenance  reasons,  but  lead directly to the creation of
"the thread library for C". I assume this is pthreads, but I have
no  real idea ATM.  Alef also inspired both Limbo [1] (a language
for writing distributed systems in for the Inferno Operating Sys-
tem [2]), but also, Go.

So,  there  is  a clear lineage here from Plan 9 to Go. And while
the devil of Plan 9 seems to be in the details, I  would  imagine
that  if  Google  was seriously looking to create the most robust
and enduring distributed computing empire on  Earth,  then  their
logical  conclusion  would be to go with the one, true "Unix suc-
cessor"; i.e., Plan 9. I just wonder how much  of  their  network
and  infrastructure  is currently running this set up. The Plan 9
creators are now clearly bought and paid for by Google, which has
been made clear by Go - not that this is a bad thing. It seems to
me to be a very good and cool thing.

Okay, back to reading :)

References
  [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limbo_(programming_language)
  [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(operating_system)



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