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| author | Kévin Le Gouguec <kevin.legouguec@gmail.com> | 2019-09-13 09:30:30 +0200 |
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| committer | Kévin Le Gouguec <kevin.legouguec@gmail.com> | 2019-09-13 09:30:30 +0200 |
| commit | 0010e9c98d8fe756f7fb0d97d6fded940847648a (patch) | |
| tree | c9c49e42ebd1e28b1681c80dfcb901e9d8227143 /reviews/talks.md | |
| parent | fc8263cbf34397ef79326b55d7f16fce7972a983 (diff) | |
| download | memory-leaks-0010e9c98d8fe756f7fb0d97d6fded940847648a.tar.xz | |
Re-watch Oral Tradition in Software Engineering
Take notes this time.
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| -rw-r--r-- | reviews/talks.md | 55 |
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diff --git a/reviews/talks.md b/reviews/talks.md index 1a34141..7346fa4 100644 --- a/reviews/talks.md +++ b/reviews/talks.md @@ -140,3 +140,58 @@ Rust can handle C functions, structures, unions and pointers. Soon in stable Rust™: varargs, smaller binaries, robust inline assembly (there already exist builtins for SIMD instructions), bfloat16, more structure layout shenanigans. + + +# Bryan Cantrill - Oral Tradition in Software Engineering + +"Oral tradition" as in "educational stories we pass down for +generations", not necessarily actually oral. + +- USENET's "[Story of Mel]" is one of our oldest enduring "tales". + +- Cantrill attributes the scarcity of 80s and 90s lore to the "deeply + proprietary" culture of the era. + - Though he does manage to squeeze in an emotional reading of a + Hemingway parody called "[The Bug Count Also Rises]". + + > Many days he stood for a long time and watched the rain and + > the shuttles and drank his double-tall mochas. With the + > mochas he was strong. + + > […] + + > They sat silently for awhile, then he asked Michaels, “I + > need you to triage for me.” + + > Michaels looked down. “I don't do that anymore,” he said. + +- The 00s introduced a new era, where re-telling a story became as + simple as sharing the link to a video. + +- Even without exploring the Internet, our own source bases are + "pulsing with narrative". + +- Ends with a historical survey of UNIX lore buried in the codebase. + - To Roger Faulkner suggesting asking Dennis Ritchie to settle the + debate on why C lacks a logical XOR: + + > … You can *ask* The Lord? + + (Spoiler: to Cantrill's dismay, it was intentional, because such + an operator could not short-circuit, and "`(A!=0) ^ (B!=0)` + isn't that much worse to write", though I personally find it + less *legible* than `A ^^ B`.) + + The point to the otherwise entertaining story being: *people are + going to care about your intent*. Younger generations yearn to + understand what's going on and how they can perpetuate their + forebears's legacy. + + (… They also need enough context to evaluate how valuable this + legacy truly is.) + + > I really cared about what Dennis thought! (… Before I knew + > he was wrong.) + +[Story of Mel]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_Mel +[The Bug Count Also Rises]: http://www.workpump.com/bugcount/bugcount.html |
