TUHS

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Re: [TUHS] Discuss of style and design of computer programs from a user standpoint

by Doug McIlroy

> tr -cs A-Za-z '\n' | > tr A-Z a-z | > sort | > uniq -c | > sort -rn | > sed ${1}q > > This is real genius. Not genius. Experience. In the Bentley/Knuth/McIlroy paper I said, "[Old] Unix hands know instinctively how to solve this one in a jiffy." While that is certainly true, the script was informed by my having written "spell", which itself was an elaboration of a model pioneered by Steve Johnson. By 1986, when BKM was published, the lore was baked in: word-processing scripts in a similar vein were stock in trade. A very early exercise of this sort was Dennis Ritchie's enumeration of anagrams in the unabridged Merriam-Webster. Since the word list barely fit on the tiny disk of the time, the job entailed unimaginable marshalling of resources. I was mightily impressed then, and still am. Doug

8 years, 1 month

Re: [TUHS] Discuss of style and design of computer programs from a user stand point [was dmr note on BSD's sins]

by Clem Cole

On Thu, May 4, 2017 at 7:14 PM, Larry McVoy <lm(a)mcvoy.com> wrote: > some of those Berkeley flags (not specifically for cat, but almost > certainly including those for cat) were really quite useful. Amen!!! I think that this is key point. What is in good taste or good style? Doug's distain for the results of: less --help | wc is found in bad design, a poor user interface, little fore thought, *etc.* Most of what is there has been added over Eric Scheinbrood's original more(1) I do not believe are used that often, but some of them are of course, and you can not tell who uses what!! So how do you decide what get rid of? How do you learn what people really need -- IMO: much of that is * experience *and this thing we call 'good taste.' As opposed to what I think happened with less(1) and many others similar programs (programmers peeing on the code because they code and the source was available -- I can add this feature to it and I think it is cool. As opposed to asking, what do really get and not having a 'master builder' arbitrating or vetting things). The problem we have is that we don't yet have a way of defining good taste. One might suggest that it takes years of civilization and also that tastes do change over time. Pike's minimalistic view (which I think is taken to the extreme in the joke about automobile dashboard on Brian Kernighan's car) sets the bar to one end and probably one of the reason why UNIX had a bad reputation, certainly by non-computer scientists, when it first appeared as being difficult. Another extreme is systems that put in you a box and never let you do anything but what we told you do; which I find just as frighten and frustration builds there when I use them. Clearly systems that are so noisy that can not find what really want, or need is another dimension of the same bad design. So what to do? [more in a minute...] Larry is right. Many of the 'features' added to UNIX (and Linux) over time have been and *are useful*. Small and simple as it was (and I really admire Ken, Dennis and the Team for its creation), but in 2017 I really don't want to run the Sixth Edition for my day to day work anymore - which I happily did in 1977. But the problem is, as we got 'unlimited address space' of 32 and 64 bits, and more room for more 'useful' things, we also got a great deal of rubbish and waste. I am interpreting Doug's point about less --help | wc is that is that are so many thorns and weeds, it hard to see to see the flowers in the garden. I'd like to observe that is that most college courses in CS I have seen talk about how to construct a programs, algorithms, structures - i.e. the mechanics of some operation. But this discussion is about the human element. What we feel is good or bad and how it related to how to use the program. I think about my friends that have degrees in literature, art and architecture. In all cases, they spend a lot of time examining past examples, of good and bad - and thinking and discussing what makes them so. I'm actually happy to see it was Professor McIlroy that is one of the folks taking a stand on current craziness. I think this is only going to get better if a new crop of students that have been trained in 'good taste.' So, I wonder do any of the schools like Darthmouth and the like teach courses that study 'style' and taste in CS. Yes, it is a young field but we have been around long enough that we do a body of work good and bad to consider. I think there is a book or two and a few lectures in there somewhere. Thoughts? Clem

8 years, 1 month

Re: [TUHS] Discuss of style and design of computer programs from a user stand point

by David

> From: Michael Kjörling <michael(a)kjorling.se> > To: tuhs(a)minnie.tuhs.org > Subject: Re: [TUHS] Discuss of style and design of computer programs > from a user stand point > Message-ID: <20170506091857.GE12539(a)yeono.kjorling.se> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 > > I would actually take that one step further: When you are writing > code, you are _first and foremost_ communicating with whatever human > will need to read or modify the code later. That human might be you, a > colleague, or the violent psychopath who knows both where you live and > where your little kids go to school (might as well be you). You should > strive to write the code accordingly, _even if_ the odds of the threat > ever materializing are slim at most. Style matters a lot, there. > Interesting, I was going to say about the same thing about the violent psychopath who has to maintain your code after you leave. When I lectured at UCSD or was giving talks on style for ViaSat I always said the same thing: Whatever you write, the fellow who is going to wind up maintaining it is a known axe killer, now released from prison, completely reformed. He learned computer programming on MS/DOS 3.1 and a slightly broken version of Pascal. He will be given your home phone number and address so if he has any questions about the code you wrote he can get in contact with you. This always got a few chuckles. I then pointed out that whenever anyone gets code that someone else wrote, the recipient always thinks that they can ‘clean up’ what is there because the original author clearly doesn’t understand what proper code looks like. Over time, I’ve learned that everyone has a style when writing code, just like handwriting and given enough time, I can spot who the author of a block of code is just from the indenting, placement of ( and ) around a statement and other small traits. What makes good code is the ability to convey the meaning of the algorithm from the original author to all those who come after. Sometimes even the most unusual code can be quite clear, while the most cleanly formatted and commented code can be opaque to all. David

8 years, 1 month

Re: [TUHS] Discuss of style and design of computer programs from a user stand point [was dmr note on BSD's sins]

by Doug McIlroy

8 years, 1 month

Re: [TUHS] dmr note on BSD's sins

by Nemo

On 3 May 2017 at 09:09, Arthur Krewat <krewat(a)kilonet.net> wrote: > Not to mention, you can cat multiple files - as in concatenate :) Along these lines, who said "Cat went to Berkely, came back waving flags." N.

8 years, 1 month

Re: [TUHS] [Groff] ASCII Minus Sign in man Pages

by Doug McIlroy

> I believe I was the last person to modify the Linux man page macros. > Their current maintainer is not the kind of groff expert to whom it > would occur to modify them; it would work as well to ask me questions Question #1. Which tmac file to they use? If it's not in the groff package, where can it be found? Doug

8 years, 1 month

Re: [TUHS] dmr note on BSD's sins

by Doug McIlroy

With Steve's eloquent grump and cat -v on the table, I can't help re-citing the peerless cardinal sin of less --help | wc Doug

8 years, 1 month

dmr note on BSD's sins

by ron minnich

OK, I recall a note dmr wrote probably in the late 70s/early 80s when folks at UCB had (iirc) extended the symbol name size in C programs to essentially unlimited. This followed on (iirc) file names going beyond 14 characters. The rough outline was that dmr was calling out the revisions for being too general, and the phrase "BSD sins" sticks in my head (sins as a verb). I'm reminded of this by something that happened with some interns recently, as they wanted to make something immensely complex to cover a case that basically never happened. I was trying to point out that you can go overboard on that sort of thing, and it would have been nice to have such a quote handy -- anyone else remember it? ron

8 years, 2 months

Re: [TUHS] dmr note on BSD's sins

by Daniel Camolês

There you go: http://harmful.cat-v.org/cat-v/ Em 2 de mai de 2017 17:29, "Diomidis Spinellis" <dds(a)aueb.gr> escreveu: On 02/05/2017 19:11, Steve Johnson wrote: > I recall a paper Dennis wrote (maybe more like a note) that was titled > echo -c considered harmful > (I think it was -c). It decried the tendency, now completely out of > control, for everybody and their dog to piddle on perfectly good code > just because it's "open". > There's definitely Rob Pike's talk "UNIX Style, or cat -v Considered Harmful", which he delivered at the 1983 Usenix Association Conference and Software Tools USers Group Summer Conference. Unfortunately, I can't find it online. It's interesting that the talk's date is now closer to the birth of Unix than to the present. Diomidis

8 years, 2 months

Installing Amix on FS-UAE, English Amiga Users's thread

by Michael Huff

I'm this close to figuring out how to get netbsd to work on fs-uae with no prior amiga experience. Searching around the English Amiga Users's board for clues, I found a guide on downloading and installing Amix. Complete with amix download links. Haven't tried it myself -I'm still working on my bsd tangent. But for anyone interested: http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=86480

8 years, 2 months

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