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D. J. Bernstein

aaronsw.com

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Re: D. J. Bernstein

#51

Post by crucini »

antirez wrote: post #15

(read this message with a background of "arguing about the best programmer is anyway silly") djb is in no way the best programmer of the world, but he is a very smart programmer, and probably an even better mathematician. And now, my arguments about why he is not the best programmer. 1) djb software is not the most elegant software around at all. Actually trying to write high performance and bug free software his sty…

I question #3. Why is it admirable to play a role in the languages world? Shouldn't languages be a means to an end? If the end is good applications, DJB showed that you can produce good applications in C.

It seems like a lot of the energy around languages is frivolous. It's more fun to play with language features than to attack a real-world problem like writing a mail server.

As for #4, why does criticality matter? And why does the audience have to be programmers? Couldn't the author of a spreadsheet be as worthy as the author of a compiler?

Not that I'm endorsing DJB's nomination; I have pored through his source code for various reasons and have some reservations about it. But you could do much worse.

(And yes, it's all silly.)

Re: D. J. Bernstein

#52

Post by KirinDave »

astine wrote: post #37
andreyf wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If code I write is hard to deploy to your system, I don't think my code can be to blame. Rather, it's the fault of the system/language in which we are working.

I hate this attitude. If your code targets my system, I should be able to install it without editing it.

Amen.

If no one can use your code, it doesn't matter how beautiful, well-thought-out, or well-written it is. Software exists for the purpose of being executed. If your project cannot be deployed with a reasonable amount of effort, it's worse than bad software, it's a waste of time.

Re: D. J. Bernstein

#53

Post by andreyf »

astine wrote: post #37
andreyf wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If code I write is hard to deploy to your system, I don't think my code can be to blame. Rather, it's the fault of the system/language in which we are working.

I hate this attitude. If your code targets my system, I should be able to install it without editing it.

I hate this attitude. If your code targets my system, I should be able to install it without editing it.

You certainly should, but it isn't the coder's responsibility to make this possible. It's the language/system designer's.

Just because C doesn't let you deploy nicely has nothing to do with djb's ability to create beautifully architected code, which is what Aaron is praising. I'm sure djb could have written equally beautiful code in Squeak Smalltalk, and it would have been a breeze to deploy, but had no impact on how elegant the code itself was.

Re: D. J. Bernstein

#54

Post by tptacek »

DJB's code is a lot of things, but when someone says "beautiful" is one of them, I start thinking about how I might quiz them to get them to prove that they've actually read it. Smarter coders than me have sat in rooms for nightlong studies of qmail and come to the conclusion that, while clever, the C code in qmail and djbdns has clearly been compiled down from some higher level language[1]. If that code is anything, it is idiosyncratic.

[1] Having asked this question directly to DJB in person, I can say that I am at least convinced he wrote this stuff in C.

Re: D. J. Bernstein

#55

Post by antirez »

access_denied wrote: post #50
antirez wrote: post #15

(read this message with a background of "arguing about the best programmer is anyway silly") djb is in no way the best programmer of the world, but he is a very smart programmer, and probably an even better mathematician. And now, my arguments about why he is not the best programmer. 1) djb software is not the most elegant software around at all. Actually trying to write high performance and bug free software his sty…

aguing about the best programmer is a smart move when seen as an exercise to find out what it is that makes a programmer good.

this is a good point, but can be expressed with a blog post about "what are the qualities to be among the top programmers of the world?" instead of "djb is the best programmer of the world".

Still it is surely important to look at this great programmers in the aim to try to emulate all the stuff that they got right in order to improve ourself.

Re: D. J. Bernstein

#56

Post by tptacek »

pilif wrote: post #10

This is slightly off-topic as it's not about djb, but about qmail. Still: I have some experience with qmail. While I agree that it's generally very nice and certainly incredibly bug free, that quality comes at a price: Lack of features. The moment you start adding stuff: Server-side filtering (like sieve), LMTP, virus checking, spam filtering, virtual users - all that stuff you need to run a modern mail server - you…

Please avoid Exim. Even if you can't stomach qmail, which is an acquired taste, you don't have to compromise on security. Smart people can disagree about whether Postfix is _as_ secure as qmail, but none of them disagree that it is at least _very_ secure.

Re: D. J. Bernstein

#57

Post by tptacek »

jacquesm wrote: post #26
l0stman wrote: post #24

> No other programmer has this kind of track record. Donald Knuth probably comes closest, but his diary about writing TeX (printed in Literate Programming) shows how he kept finding bugs for years and never expected to be finished, only to get closer and closer (thus the odd version numbering scheme). I don't want to be dismissive but I think TeX is more complex and uses non trivial algorithms. So it's like comparing…

Anybody that says an email server is 'non trivial' hasn't looked at the guts of one yet.

As someone who has hacked mail servers, written DNS servers, and come within 100 miles of typesetting, I'm going to throw in my vote that TeX addresses a much harder problem than qmail.

Re: D. J. Bernstein

#58

Post by antirez »

alec wrote: post #49
antirez wrote: post #15

(read this message with a background of "arguing about the best programmer is anyway silly") djb is in no way the best programmer of the world, but he is a very smart programmer, and probably an even better mathematician. And now, my arguments about why he is not the best programmer. 1) djb software is not the most elegant software around at all. Actually trying to write high performance and bug free software his sty…

"You can't be the best without being influential in the field." I think an appropriate analogy is judging an architect on the hammers he has improved instead of the buildings he has designed.

I disagree, the buildings designed by Wright or Le Corbusier improved the field in many ways. They created a new architectonic system, it's like inventing a new programming language in some way.

Re: D. J. Bernstein

#59

Post by jacquesm »

tptacek wrote: post #57
jacquesm wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anybody that says an email server is 'non trivial' hasn't looked at the guts of one yet.

As someone who has hacked mail servers, written DNS servers, and come within 100 miles of typesetting, I'm going to throw in my vote that TeX addresses a much harder problem than qmail.

No contest there, but qmail is far from 'trivial'.

If you're going to compare qmail to something else though I think it should be compared to sendmail (or postfix for that matter), not to TeX.

Personally I think djb is a great coder, but there are quite a few of those around.

Programming is not a single-valued enterprise anyway, so best is a very hard to measure quantity, as good as meaningless. But I know 'bad' when I see it :)

Re: D. J. Bernstein

#60

Post by rortian »

raganwald wrote: post #45
rortian wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but aaronsw must come at an issue as a raging partisan. I know that in economics, philosophy, politics, and apparently best programmer ever!!!, he always comes at the issue with a deeply contentious point of view from an entrenched idealogical camp. It's kind of a shame because of the the advantages of being young is being able to approach a field without having to take sides. Meaningful dialog and inquiry v…

the advantages of being young is being able to approach a field without having to take sides. You must be describing your youth, not mine! My experience with youth is that it was the period of my life in which the whites were blindingly white, the blacks impossibly back, and there were no colours or shades of grey to distract us from our belief that we knew exactly what was right and what was wrong. And thank goodnes…

It's a far point. I was referring to youth in the twenties sense. Of course younger than that you are quite right. Immaturity is a bitch.

Unfortunately, certitude can also lead people to be fierce advocates of the status quo.

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