This might be an out-of-nowhere question, but seeing how we're discussing Rob Pike and Plan 9 here, why does Plan 9's rc shell need the $path variable, when you could just bind all binary directories onto or behind /bin/?
If you want to read the HN comments on this from 7 years ago:
That HN discussion is mentioned by the top commenter on G+, saying: "The discussions there were hardly interesting, however", which I thought was kinda funny.
From comments, not sure if this is a joke itself.
dd is horrible on purpose. It's a joke about OS/360 JCL. But today it's an internationally standardized joke. I guess that says it all.