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Ken Thompson quotes

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Re: Ken Thompson quotes

#61

Post by mavelikara »

OskarS wrote: post #11
dm319 wrote: post #10

Some 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.

Some day we will look back and say the same about generics in Go :-)

Re: Ken Thompson quotes

#63

Post by packetslave »

acqq wrote: post #60

It seems this is a real story from the time Ken Thompson started to work at Google: "Q: I know Google has a policy where every new employee has to get checked out on languages before they're allowed to check code in. Which means you had to get checked out on C [which you co-created]. Thompson: Yeah, I haven't been. Q. You haven't been! You're not allowed to check in code? Thompson: I'm not allowed to check in code, n…

If you don't have readability in a language, you just have to get a code review from someone who does have readability. You can still check in your code.

Re: Ken Thompson quotes

#65

Post by smhenderson »

petercooper wrote: post #8

If you like this sort of thing, we've been running a Twitter account for several years dedicated to pithy programming related quotes: https://twitter.com/codewisdom

Hey, thanks, will check it out.

These guys are pretty great too:

https://twitter.com/EmacsHaiku

https://twitter.com/ed1conf

Re: Ken Thompson quotes

#66

Post by acqq »

packetslave wrote: post #63
acqq wrote: post #60

It seems this is a real story from the time Ken Thompson started to work at Google: "Q: I know Google has a policy where every new employee has to get checked out on languages before they're allowed to check code in. Which means you had to get checked out on C [which you co-created]. Thompson: Yeah, I haven't been. Q. You haven't been! You're not allowed to check in code? Thompson: I'm not allowed to check in code, n…

If you don't have readability in a language, you just have to get a code review from someone who does have readability. You can still check in your code.

The topic was that apparently Google insisted on testing Ken Thompson if he knows C, because policy.

Which if true means a stubborn bureaucracy running uncontrolled there.

It's like hiring Andrew Tanenbaum and then insisting on him taking a test to check if he "knows" Linux.

My question was in sense, did anybody right the wrong, once even the media recognized the absurdity of that particular case.

Re: Ken Thompson quotes

#67

Post by vram22 »

petercooper wrote: post #8

If you like this sort of thing, we've been running a Twitter account for several years dedicated to pithy programming related quotes: https://twitter.com/codewisdom

Followed it.

iamdevloper ( https://twitter.com/iamdevloper ) is good too.

DEVOPS_BORAT ( https://twitter.com/DEVOPS_BORAT ), which was often hilarious, seems to have stopped a while ago.

Re: Ken Thompson quotes

#68

Post by oxryly1 »

frou_dh wrote: post #42
krapp wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah... it turns out that most eyes prefer to pay attention to interesting things which are easy to look at, so the distribution of attention is determined more by politics and fashion than necessity. Popular frameworks and projects that look good on a resume get deeply scrutinized and contributed to, while even simple bugs in mission critical software can go unnoticed for decades because the code is ugly and arcane,…

IIRC the guy from Jane Street that does all the OCaml evangelism has said that it's hard to pay people enough money to motivate them to audit "boring" code for any length of time.

Yaron Minsky? (https://blog.janestreet.com/author/yminsky)

Re: Ken Thompson quotes

#69

Post by [deleted] »

countryslicker wrote: post #33
DonHopkins wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 per…

[deleted]

Re: Ken Thompson quotes

#70

Post by oxryly1 »

acqq wrote: post #66
packetslave wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't have readability in a language, you just have to get a code review from someone who does have readability. You can still check in your code.

The topic was that apparently Google insisted on testing Ken Thompson if he knows C, because policy. Which if true means a stubborn bureaucracy running uncontrolled there. It's like hiring Andrew Tanenbaum and then insisting on him taking a test to check if he "knows" Linux. My question was in sense, did anybody right the wrong, once even the media recognized the absurdity of that particular case.

I think you meant Linus Torvalds.
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