Messages in this thread | | | Date | Wed, 14 Nov 2007 20:21:04 -0500 | From | Russell Leighton <> | Subject | OT: Does Linux have any "Perfect Code" |
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Bryan Cantrill of Sun (ala DTrace) has a notion of perfect code:
http://blogs.sun.com/bmc/entry/on_i_dreaming_in_code
He also has some examples (from bottom comment section of above):
> > > Can you list a small number of examples of "software perfection"? > > Posted by Russell Leighton on November 14, 2007 at 04:02 AM PST # > > Russell, > > My canonical small example of perfection in Solaris would be Jeff > Bonwick's mod-by-a-billion code in hrt2ts(): > > http://cvs.opensolaris.org/source/xref/onnv/onnv-gate/usr/src/uts/ > common/os/timers.c#875 > > Solaris of course has lots of bigger, more complicated examples. Now > on the one hand, one wants to refrain from pointing to thousands of > lines of code and saying that there are no bugs therein, but on the > other, there are many subsystems that have been in place and in heavy > use for years without defect or modification. At the risk of being > egocentric, the cyclic subsystem (which is executed at least 100 times > per second on every Solaris system) had its last substantial fix over > six years ago, and its last fix of any flavor over three years ago: > > http://cvs.opensolaris.org/source/xref/onnv/onnv-gate/usr/src/uts/ > common/os/cyclic.c > > Modesty (and the lack, of course, of a proof of its correctness) > prevents me from calling the cyclic subsystem perfect -- but such as > unknown defects remain, there are damn few of them, and we can say > that they must be a result of highly usual (or at least, heretofore > unseen) circumstances. > > A non-Solaris example -- and one that I've been known to use as the > canonical example of the persistence of software -- is Super Mario > Kart. This is a game that was developed (to its completion) fifteen > years ago for the Super Nintendo console. Source code, to the best of > my knowledge, is not publicly available and may indeed be lost -- but > the binaries persist and (if my coworkers are any indication) remain > in active use. Given the longevity of, say, Homer's Odyssey, there is > reason to believe that Super Mario Kart will survive in perpetuity -- > that thousands of years from now, twenty-somethings somewhere will be > using the software exactly as it is used today. Is this perfection? > Perhaps not -- but it also might not be discernible from perfection... > > Posted by Bryan Cantrill on November 14, 2007 at 07:51 AM PST #
Does Linux have any such examples true software perfection?
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