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Comment by trhway | Hacker News Reader

>But that doesn't mean they "had full awareness of every language feature available in the alternatives", and even if they did, smart people are still susceptible to the blub paradox.

i hope you're just not aware whom you're talking about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_%28programming_language%29:

"Go, ..., is a programming language initially developed at Google[6] in 2007 by Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson."

Suggesting application of Blub paradox to the people who invented Unix ...

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I think the blub paradox applies to everyone. Unless you spend time using a feature in earnest, it is easy to convince yourself that it's not valuable. Do you have reason to disagree?

That's potentially true.

On the other hand, unless you spend a lot of time using a feature in earnest, it's hard to know that the feature is actually not necessary because it's an enormous workaround for something else.

>I think the blub paradox applies to everyone.

no offense, man, yet this your statement is an example of the blub paradox.

"But when our hypothetical Blub programmer looks in the other direction, up the power continuum, he doesn't realize he's looking up. What he sees are merely weird languages. He probably considers them about equivalent in power to Blub ..."

it is like you looking up at Thompson and not realizing that you're looking up. You probably consider Thompson equivalent to you and everyone. (Again, no offense intended, though i can see how it can sound kind of offensive).

> Suggesting application of Blub paradox to the people who invented Unix ...

Who mean the same people that disregarded memory safe system programming languages and decided to create their own "unsafe by default" one?

The same people that created a text based operating system, while at Xerox PARC GUI based workstations were being developed in memory safe system programming languages?

I was thinking about how much space they saved in their C strings by having a null byte instead of the Pascal style pointer and length struct ... on their original 16 bit systems, it was one. One byte! So much pain was caused by that decision.

Specially since some companies were writing OS in Mesa, PL/I and Algol variants with success.

more than 20 years ago i did write in PL/I some bits, and i did write in Algol on a system project (embedded OS and dev tools for it). Man, it is ugly.

>memory safe system programming languages

it sounds a bit oxymoronic, at least on practice. I'm yet to see a normally functioning system written using "safe system programming language".

>The same people that created a text based operating system, while at Xerox PARC GUI based workstations were being developed in memory safe system programming languages?

i hope you don't mean Unix here because Unix has nothing to do with either "text based" or "GUI based" - it is completely orthogonal to that.

> it sounds a bit oxymoronic, at least on practice. I'm yet to see a normally functioning system written using "safe system programming language".

Just some examples of operating systems that worked for several years in certain circles.

Xerox Star systems coded in Mesa.

Lilith coded in Modula-2.

Spin coded in Modula-3.

Oberon coded in Oberon.

AOS coded in Active Oberon.

Ethos coded in Oberon.

Original version of OS/400 coded in Modula-2.

Mac Lisa and initial versions of Mac OS coded in Object Pascal.

VME in Algol 68

The real time systems driving lots of trains, planes, helicopters and medical devices running Ada code deployed directly to firmware.

> i hope you don't mean Unix here because Unix has nothing to do with either "text based" or "GUI based" - it is completely orthogonal to that.

I sure do.

UNIX System V does not offer any GUI interface.

POSIX does not offer GUI support.

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