Three quotes are from the book "Coders at Work". I can really recommend that one, very interesting read. My review of it: https://www.amazon.com/gp/review/R2OV0TG7MJGXGL
Ken Thompson quotes
31–40 of 76 posts
Re: Ken Thompson quotes
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
That first one you quoted is pretty incredible. It's hard for me to even imagine writing many thousands of lines of code in ed today.
I have no idea but perhaps in those days (60s & 70s), they wrote code on paper first before feeding it into the computer? If so, then ed was probably tolerable. It's nigh unthinkable these days of course.
Line editors aren't so bad, and the Unix ed is pretty awesome. It's easy to list and read through code, and it has powerful search-and-replace. You just have to get used to using search or cursor movement commands for making edits. The programming I've been doing lately has all been in CP/M, using its "ed", which is a very simple line editor, and I still haven't felt the need to write things out beforehand. I think you just get used to it.
Re: Ken Thompson quotes
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow. - Linus Torvalds
Actually, that quote was "formulated" by Eric S Raymond (to whom Theo was referring as "the originator of the statement"), and is only deceptively named "Linux's Law" [1] in "honor" of Linus Torvalds, which is ironic because it actually dishonors him by being invalid. The point that Theo was making is that ESR talks and talks and types and types about many eyeballs looking at code, but when it comes down to actually…
That is a lot of words to say that it doesn't help to have access to the source code if qualified people don't perform adequate audits.
In this regard, open source software is still better. Google "Heartbleed".
When a neglected piece of critical infrastructure code was finally examined, it was shown to have serious flaws. Top talent immediately shifted their focus and began sorely needed maintenance. Nobody asked permission. Nobody called their lawyer. They just got to work to get-er-done. I think Theo was among those to help resolve issues.
I am grateful for those eyeballs and those fingers.
Re: Ken Thompson quotes
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Huh, I feel exactly the same way. I've never been employed in a position where the bottom-up approach was the one people were actually looking for, so I've always felt guilty about my work ethic - I feel like I'm satisfying my own curiosity on company time.
I don't feel like not adding value: Being a bottom-up thinker means I can get to the root cause of hard problems, or even warn and prevent bad solutions. My problem is that I have always felt that only top-down thinkers can do architecture and design. This article shows that this is not the case.
And that's why I named my company:
Re: Ken Thompson quotes
#35Some gems: > "I've seen [visual] editors like that, but I don't feel a need for them. I don't want to see the state of the file when I'm editing." -Thompson on the superiority of ed to editors such as today's vi or emacs, as summarized by Peter Salus in A Quarter Century of UNIX (Addison-Wesley, 1994). > The X server has to be the biggest program I've ever seen that doesn't do anything for you. and I'm glad linux has…
That first one you quoted is pretty incredible. It's hard for me to even imagine writing many thousands of lines of code in ed today.
Well, of course, one would write with `cat -`, and only edit with `ed`.
It isn't a very productive cycle, but with printouts and smaller codebases, it seems viable.
Re: Ken Thompson quotes
#36An observation about > The press, television, and movies make heroes of vandals by calling them whiz kids. ... There is obviously a cultural gap. The act of breaking into a computer system has to have the same social stigma as breaking into a neighbor's house. It should not matter that the neighbor's door is unlocked. If only it was just kids now. What's changed in the decades since is we have serious professionals b…
well, those whiz kids had to grow up to be someone, someday...
Re: Ken Thompson quotes
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have no idea but perhaps in those days (60s & 70s), they wrote code on paper first before feeding it into the computer? If so, then ed was probably tolerable. It's nigh unthinkable these days of course.
Line editors aren't so bad, and the Unix ed is pretty awesome. It's easy to list and read through code, and it has powerful search-and-replace. You just have to get used to using search or cursor movement commands for making edits. The programming I've been doing lately has all been in CP/M, using its "ed", which is a very simple line editor, and I still haven't felt the need to write things out beforehand. I think y…
With ed you can do cursor movements? How? I meant to ask people how they use ed and compile an article, so that people would have a better idea of what's possible and what is not with ed. Could we talk about how ed can be used?
Re: Ken Thompson quotes
#38On his quote about educational value of UNIX and being so small you can go through it line by line to lean what it does. Can someone recommend a version appropriate for doing this?
Minix was designed (originally) for exactly this purpose.
Somewhere I had a 3 ring binder of the complete source for Minix, can't remember where I picked it up, but long gone now, sadly.
Re: Ken Thompson quotes
#39On his quote about educational value of UNIX and being so small you can go through it line by line to lean what it does. Can someone recommend a version appropriate for doing this?
As well as Minix, which is intended as just such a teaching aid and comes with a textbook, there's the Lions book, which is a complete annotated source listing of an early Unix, and which was passed around as nerd Samizdat for a while, until the Unix copyright status was changed.
Re: Ken Thompson quotes
#40On his quote about educational value of UNIX and being so small you can go through it line by line to lean what it does. Can someone recommend a version appropriate for doing this?