The Nouns Absorb the Verbs
The Nouns Absorb the Verbs
Most systems grow an API for every kind of thing: one call for files, another for windows, another for network sockets, another for processes. Plan 9 refuses the growth. It keeps exactly nine messages — walk, open, read, write, clunk, stat, and a few kin — and pushes everything that would have been a new verb into a new noun instead: a file.
A window is a file. A network connection is a file. A process's memory is a file. The protocol never learns a new word; the world underneath it just learns to answer to the ones it already has.
Seed: Plan 9 9P protocol.
Central fact: 9P defines a small, fixed set of RPC messages (walk, open, read, write, clunk, stat...) and achieves generality not by growing new verbs for new kinds of resources, but by representing every resource as a file that answers the same fixed verbs.
