17 Jan
2025
17 Jan
'25
6:12 p.m.
To me this list is a real-life demonstration of the
differences between
the, prevalent at the time, thoughtless agglomeration of features into a
monolith approach against Unix's careful separation of concerns and
modularization via small tools. The same contrast appears in a more
contrived setting in J. Bentley's CACM Programming Pearl's column where
Doug McIlroy critiques a unique word counting literate program written
by Don Knuth [3]. (I slightly suspect that the initial program
specification was a trap set up for Knuth.)
It wasn't a setup. Although Jon's introduction seems to imply that he had
invited both Don and me to participate, I actually was moved to write the
critique when I proofread the 2-author column, as I did for many of Jon's
Programming Pearls. That led to the 3-author arrangement. Knuth and
I are still friends; he even reprinted the critique. It is also memorably
depicted at https://comic.browserling.com/tag/douglas-mcilroy.
Doug