3 ms·

> It does not sell the book at all, and I'm not at all surprised that the writing is equally weak. I think anyone with even a passing familiarity with Kernigha

> It does not sell the book at all, and I'm not at all surprised that the writing is equally weak. I think anyone with even a passing familiarity with Kernighan's work would be surprised by an instance of weak writing.

AlbertCory 5y ago
K&R was a real masterpiece. This book, though, attempts to be something different. Writing history that's accurate and making it interesting is not easy. If it's non-fiction and a long time ago, you find that most people can't remember much of anything, and certainly not any dialog. I found from my book's reviews that a couple people wanted something more like Kernighan's. Oh well. That's not what I wanted to do, so I'm not sorry. Other people have done that. Like one of the reviewers said (a 5-star review): There’s no doubt that this book has a limited audience. In my opinion, to find the book interesting, you need to have a pre-existing interest in computer history, Unix, and programming (in that order). If you already have some familiarity with using Unix (or its derivatives) from the command-line, that will certainly help you understand the significance of many of the items that Kernighan discusses. If you have no prior experience with Unix, then I don’t know why you picked up this book or read this review!
- justin66 5y ago
  > If it's non-fiction and a long time ago, you find that most people can't remember much of anything, and certainly not any dialog. It's unclear to me whether you're applying this statement to Kernighan's Unix history, which I haven't read, but he's given some good talks on the matter in recent years that serve as counterexamples to the notion that he doesn't remember anything. Whether he knows enough to write something that's compelling... I mean, seriously, I don't even know what it would take for a history of Unix to be compelling. I see that your book is a historical novel. Maybe that's the way to go. > K&R was a real masterpiece. He has written a number of very good books. (It occurs to me that the guy is in his late seventies in addition to working without an editor, but I'm not going to jump to any conclusions about the writing without looking at the book)
  - AlbertCory 5y ago
    "can't remember much of anything" : well, until you've tried asking people things about the past, maybe reserve judgment about how perfect memories are. I'm sure Kernighan remembers certain things that he did, and that's fine for a memoir. Usually, though, if you ask someone else who was there, they either don't remember it at all, or have a completely different set of facts. Or they've died or otherwise become unreachable. One of my podcast interviewers said he'd talked to three people who were at the Jobs-PARC meetings, and gotten three different stories about what happened. The stories we've all read about Hitler's last days were established by Hugh Trevor-Roper [1], and he talked to hundreds of people, comparing their stories to each other, and making sure they hadn't coordinated their stories. He did it so well that the facts have never been seriously challenged. (unfortunately, he fell for the fake "Hitler diaries" story much later, which kinda damaged his reputation.) I had some documents to go on (thanks to bitsavers), and I guess Brian must have, too. But I didn't go nearly into the level of thoroughness HT-R did. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_TrevorRoper#Investigating_Hitler's_last_days https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_TrevorRoper#Investigating...

AlbertCory 5y ago

K&R was a real masterpiece. This book, though, attempts to be something different. Writing history that's accurate and making it interesting is not easy. If it's non-fiction and a long time ago, you find that most people can't remember much of anything, and certainly not any dialog. I found from my book's reviews that a couple people wanted something more like Kernighan's. Oh well. That's not what I wanted to do, so I'm not sorry. Other people have done that. Like one of the reviewers said (a 5-star review): There’s no doubt that this book has a limited audience. In my opinion, to find the book interesting, you need to have a pre-existing interest in computer history, Unix, and programming (in that order). If you already have some familiarity with using Unix (or its derivatives) from the command-line, that will certainly help you understand the significance of many of the items that Kernighan discusses. If you have no prior experience with Unix, then I don’t know why you picked up this book or read this review!

justin66 5y ago
> If it's non-fiction and a long time ago, you find that most people can't remember much of anything, and certainly not any dialog. It's unclear to me whether you're applying this statement to Kernighan's Unix history, which I haven't read, but he's given some good talks on the matter in recent years that serve as counterexamples to the notion that he doesn't remember anything. Whether he knows enough to write something that's compelling... I mean, seriously, I don't even know what it would take for a history of Unix to be compelling. I see that your book is a historical novel. Maybe that's the way to go. > K&R was a real masterpiece. He has written a number of very good books. (It occurs to me that the guy is in his late seventies in addition to working without an editor, but I'm not going to jump to any conclusions about the writing without looking at the book)
- AlbertCory 5y ago
  "can't remember much of anything" : well, until you've tried asking people things about the past, maybe reserve judgment about how perfect memories are. I'm sure Kernighan remembers certain things that he did, and that's fine for a memoir. Usually, though, if you ask someone else who was there, they either don't remember it at all, or have a completely different set of facts. Or they've died or otherwise become unreachable. One of my podcast interviewers said he'd talked to three people who were at the Jobs-PARC meetings, and gotten three different stories about what happened. The stories we've all read about Hitler's last days were established by Hugh Trevor-Roper [1], and he talked to hundreds of people, comparing their stories to each other, and making sure they hadn't coordinated their stories. He did it so well that the facts have never been seriously challenged. (unfortunately, he fell for the fake "Hitler diaries" story much later, which kinda damaged his reputation.) I had some documents to go on (thanks to bitsavers), and I guess Brian must have, too. But I didn't go nearly into the level of thoroughness HT-R did. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_TrevorRoper#Investigating_Hitler's_last_days https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_TrevorRoper#Investigating...