6 ms·

man -T grep | grep 'Free Soft\|Thom' (Cop)108 348 Q(yright 1998-2000, 2002, 2005-2023 Free Softw)-.1 E(are F) Sure, he wrote _a_ version of grep, and probab

man -T grep | grep 'Free Soft\|Thom' (Cop)108 348 Q(yright 1998-2000, 2002, 2005-2023 Free Softw)-.1 E(are F) Sure, he wrote _a_ version of grep, and probably the first, but who cares? "The" (sure, you might run some bsd grep) current version of grep certainly doesn't.

jacquesm 1y ago
No, he wrote grep. Before he wrote it there was no grep. And yes, he's recognized as a great programmer. With Multics, Unix, B, C, UTF-8 Plan9, Inferno and grep to his name (and probably others that I forgot) he has more than deserved that. Future grep versions, including the FSF one, were all re-implementations. Your statement in the GP is nonsensical.
- ohdeardear 1y ago
  I do not agree he was a great programmer. All of his programs are trivial from a computer science perspective. In fact, you can quite easily check this by trying to let an LLM generate a program like grep. It can do that. Now, there also exist programs for which LLMs can't generate code, because it's too complex.
  - jacquesm 1y ago
    You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. And that's fine but it is kind of adding a lot of noise and zero signal.
    - ohdeardear 1y ago
      [flagged]
      - jacquesm 1y ago
        Yes, so you say, and I'm the pope on alternate Sundays. Appeals to authority are meaningless without identity. Meanwhile, I highly doubt you are qualified to polish Thompson's shoes, all I see is an AC novelty account making dumb claims with hindsight. Anyway, enough with you, off to the ignore list.
        YouAreWRONGtoo 1y ago
        Not sure what kind of idiotic website this is that people more qualifed than the average idiot here are "flagged". Thompson is completely irrelevant to computer science. Any idiot can write a program, but only some people can make an actual contribution. Knuth actually did something useful in comparison. Also, Knuth was able to articulate. You are the nobody here.
philipallstar 1y ago
I'm just saying this is incorrect: > When was the last time that the author of "grep" was recognized as a great programmer? Never. He is recognised as that. Your opinion on him is nothing to do with anything.

jacquesm 1y ago

No, he wrote grep. Before he wrote it there was no grep. And yes, he's recognized as a great programmer. With Multics, Unix, B, C, UTF-8 Plan9, Inferno and grep to his name (and probably others that I forgot) he has more than deserved that. Future grep versions, including the FSF one, were all re-implementations. Your statement in the GP is nonsensical.

ohdeardear 1y ago
I do not agree he was a great programmer. All of his programs are trivial from a computer science perspective. In fact, you can quite easily check this by trying to let an LLM generate a program like grep. It can do that. Now, there also exist programs for which LLMs can't generate code, because it's too complex.
- jacquesm 1y ago
  You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. And that's fine but it is kind of adding a lot of noise and zero signal.
  - ohdeardear 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - jacquesm 1y ago
      Yes, so you say, and I'm the pope on alternate Sundays. Appeals to authority are meaningless without identity. Meanwhile, I highly doubt you are qualified to polish Thompson's shoes, all I see is an AC novelty account making dumb claims with hindsight. Anyway, enough with you, off to the ignore list.
      - YouAreWRONGtoo 1y ago
        Not sure what kind of idiotic website this is that people more qualifed than the average idiot here are "flagged". Thompson is completely irrelevant to computer science. Any idiot can write a program, but only some people can make an actual contribution. Knuth actually did something useful in comparison. Also, Knuth was able to articulate. You are the nobody here.

philipallstar 1y ago

I'm just saying this is incorrect: > When was the last time that the author of "grep" was recognized as a great programmer? Never. He is recognised as that. Your opinion on him is nothing to do with anything.