1 May
2017
1 May
'17
11:25 p.m.
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