Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Sat, 1 Dec 2001 05:34:34 -0700 | From | Victor Yodaiken <> | Subject | Re: Coding style - a non-issue |
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On Fri, Nov 30, 2001 at 09:15:50PM -0800, Linus Torvalds wrote: > > On Fri, 30 Nov 2001, Victor Yodaiken wrote: > > > > Ok. There was no design, just "less than random mutations". > > Deep. > > I'm not claiming to be deep, I'm claiming to do it for fun. > > I _am_ claiming that the people who think you "design" software are > seriously simplifying the issue, and don't actually realize how they > themselves work.
Just to make sure we are speaking the same language, here is what the Oxford English Dictionary sez Design: (1) a plan or scheme conceived in the mind; a project. ... (2) a purpose, an intention, an aim ... (3) an end in view, a goal ... (4) A preliminary sketch, a plan or pattern
For the verb we get things like: "draw, sketch, outline, delineate"
> > > There was a overall architecture, from Dennis and Ken. > > Ask them. I'll bet you five bucks they'll agree with me, not with you. > I've talked to both, but not really about this particular issue, so I > might lose, but I think I've got the much better odds.
You're on. Send me the $5. Here's what Dennis Ritchie wrote in his preface to the re-issued Lions book: "you will see in the code an underlying structure that has lasted a long time and has managed to accomodate vast changes in the computing environment"
> If you want to see a system that was more thoroughly _designed_, you > should probably point not to Dennis and Ken, but to systems like L4 and > Plan-9, and people like Jochen Liedtk and Rob Pike.
You appear to be using "design" to mean "complete specification". See above.
> > And notice how they aren't all that popular or well known? "Design" is > like a religion - too much of it makes you inflexibly and unpopular.
Memory fades with age, as I know from sad experience, but try to remember who wrote things like:
| |However, I still would not call "pthreads" designed. | |Engineered. Even well done for what it tried to do. But not "Designed". | |This is like VMS. It was good, solid, engineering. Design? Who needs |design? It _worked_. | |But that's not how UNIX is or should be. There was more than just |engineering in UNIX. There was Design with a capital "D". Notions of |"process" vs "file", and things that transcend pure engineering. |Minimalism. | |In the end, it comes down to aesthetics. pthreads is "let's solve a |problem". But it's not answering the big questions in the universe. |It's not asking itself "what is the underlying _meaning_ of threads?". |"What is the big picture?".
Some academic twit, no doubt, with no understanding or experience in actually making a blue collar OS really work. The same fool once wrote:
> Think about WHY our system call latency beats everybody else on the > planet. Think about WHY Linux is fast. It's because it's designed > right.
Please send the $5 soon.
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