> I always loved the "everything is an object" approach
Which sadly isn't at all what Plan9 does, in the usual "worse is better" way of Unix. Objects would allow a bit more versatility than the "everything is a file, usually one with plain UTF-8 text" approach.
(And actually, Windows is closer to an object world with COM, as evidenced by e.g. the core model of PowerShell)
Of course, an object-model has a hard time when the rest of the world and the net is talking in files, you're also much more likely to create a walled garden.
As for simplicity, I can understand that regarding systems like Smalltalk (or possibly lisp machines), although Oberon serves as a prime counter-example here. It did inspire the Acme editor, and here you can see that if your basic text model is objects, not just a byte-stream, some extensions are easier to do (different fonts, syntax highlighting, widgets).
And yes, I'm aware that the usual response to that was and is "you don't need that". Milages obviously do vary.
Which sadly isn't at all what Plan9 does, in the usual "worse is better" way of Unix. Objects would allow a bit more versatility than the "everything is a file, usually one with plain UTF-8 text" approach. (And actually, Windows is closer to an object world with COM, as evidenced by e.g. the core model of PowerShell)
Of course, an object-model has a hard time when the rest of the world and the net is talking in files, you're also much more likely to create a walled garden.
As for simplicity, I can understand that regarding systems like Smalltalk (or possibly lisp machines), although Oberon serves as a prime counter-example here. It did inspire the Acme editor, and here you can see that if your basic text model is objects, not just a byte-stream, some extensions are easier to do (different fonts, syntax highlighting, widgets).
And yes, I'm aware that the usual response to that was and is "you don't need that". Milages obviously do vary.