7 ms·

Source of the famous “Now you have two problems” quote (2006)

145 points by thewarrior 14y ago

icanhasfay 14y ago
Today's relevant xkcd: http://xkcd.com/1171/ http://xkcd.com/1171/
raldi 14y ago
There's actually a little more to the story than that. On 2007-01-09, I wrote to David Tilbrook: Hi David .. I came across a web page (http://regex.info/blog/2006-09-15/247) investigating the source of the following quotation: "Whenever faced with a problem, some people say `Lets use _____.' Now, they have two problems." The author of the site seems to have gone through a lot of trouble to hunt down the original author of the quote. The best he was able to do was discover a Usenet sig from 1988 attributed to "D. Tilbrook." I was wondering if this was you -- if so, I think you should contact the author to set the record straight. His post was recently linked from the news aggregator site Reddit, at http://programming.reddit.com/info/xlov/comments and quite a few people have been reading the story and discussing the quote. He wrote back: I can lay claim to being the author, but I cannot remember when or where I first used it. Zalman Stern worked for me at CMU so may have quoted me, hence the attribution to him. Actually one of the funnier incidents regarding my "famous" quotes was: "Software is the only business in which adding extra lanes to the Golden Gate bridge would be called maintenance" -- David Tilbrook - circa 1981 I was at a meeting when the speaker used this quote and attributed it to David Parnas -- I was appropriately indignant. -- david P.S.: Do we know each other? The answer to his postscript was no. :) And he later replied again to add: By the way, I think I coined the phrase at a European conference in Dublin circa 1985. I was talking about the difficulty maintaining portable software when supposedly "standard" tools (e.g., awk(1)) differed from system to system. Then later someone pointed out to me that it was appearing in various signature lines which I suppose led to its being spread. I forwarded it all to Jeffrey Friedl (the author of the linked post), but I guess he figured the comments already did a good job covering the story, or maybe he wanted to get explicit permission from David to repost the emails but never got it. But I think David's reply is interesting and compuhistoric enough that I don't want it to die in my GMail archives -- and so I'm posting it again here.
homosaur 14y ago
Great article, thanks to the author for chasing down and cataloguing another entertaining and fine piece of geek lore.
lutusp 14y ago
It's a shame that regular expressions are so often associated with Perl, as though they're a single topic. It's like speaking of astronomy and astrology in the same breath.
- mikeash 14y ago
  "It's like speaking of astronomy and astrology in the same breath." Hmm... which is which?
  - lutusp 14y ago
    Well, let's just say they're different. Also, I've been told there are ten astrologers for every astronomer. :)
    - chris_mahan 14y ago
      An astrologer has a question about stars. He says: "I know, I'll ask an astronomer." Now he has two problems. Sigh...
- mhd 14y ago
  "so often"? Really? That must be a rather particular age bracket, as newer programmers probably don't know Perl at all (apart from its reputation), and the old Unix-heads know that Perl itself didn't really invent them (or basically anything, as Larry Wall would be the first to admit). Sure, "Perl compatible" is a pretty common moniker (as in e.g. the "PCRE" library), as the POSIX (or original grep/sed) implementations are a bit anemic. And I don't think any of them deserves to be compared with astrology, but don't particularly care to get into that argument again. About as worthless as vim/emacs/IDE discussions.
  - lutusp 14y ago
    > "so often"? Really? The relationship with Perl was a point made in the linked article. I personally don't use Perl any more, but I certainly use regular expressions. > And I don't think any of them deserves to be compared with astrology ... No, that wasn't meant as an analogy, just an example of contrasting entities that are sometimes confused. > About as worthless as vim/emacs/IDE discussions. Complete agreement.
ericb 14y ago
I have found holes in google's newsgroup archives previously. It surprises me because it should be such a small amount of data in today's terms. It has enough historical significance that you'd think they'd care for it better given their mission to organize the world's data and make it universally accessible.
- snowwrestler 14y ago
  The problems with the Google Groups Deja News archive have been well-documented; Google has acknowledged them but essentially said "not worth our time to fix." I don't have the direct link to it handy, unfortunately, but I'm pretty sure my memory is correct. Personally I suspect that the only reason they haven't just taken down the old Deja archive entirely is that they know the press and tech community would give them hell for doing it. So they let it linger on in this sort of compromised state.
  - koralatov 14y ago
    That's a real shame. Another option would be to hand over a copy of the complete archive to another part[y|ies], who can then distribute it as they please. Since the data has no real commercial value, I don't see the harm in doing that. I also don't see it ever happening, sadly...
    - snowwrestler 14y ago
      I feel like it is a relic of a Google Past: the search company that wanted to organize the world's information and make it findable. Today's Google seems to be a product company that wants to imitate other major tech companies and beat them at their own game (Google Apps -> Microsoft, Android -> Apple, Google+ -> Facebook).
      - smackmybishop 14y ago
        Google bought Android two years before the iPhone came out.
breck 14y ago
Interesting quote by Zawinski in the comments: Third: obviously I got Kelly’s joke about “streams of bytes”, uh, that’s why I quoted it. It’s funny, and it makes the point (which I fully agree with) that the decades-old Unix “pipe” model is just plain dumb, because it forces you to think of everything as serializable text, even things that are fundamentally not text, or that are not sensibly serializable.
MattBearman 14y ago
...and now I understand today's XKCD [0] - I'd never heard this quote 'til today either. All is right with the world again :) [0] - http://xkcd.com/1171/ http://xkcd.com/1171/
- bo1024 14y ago
  You have a problem, so you code a solution in Perl. Now you have at least three problems.
- mhb 14y ago
  In future similar situations, the xkcd individual thread forum may help: http://forums.xkcd.com/viewforum.php?f=7 http://forums.xkcd.com/viewforum.php?f=7
  - juan_juarez 14y ago
    ...or this wiki: http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php
- abjr 14y ago
  I'm surprised no one mentioned this one: http://xkcd.com/208/ http://xkcd.com/208/
rplst8 14y ago
That broken link in the article is working fine for me. Did Google repair the issues with the Deja News archive?
nathanstitt 14y ago
I like the backhanded comment jwz pays Perl in the comments. To paraphrase: “Perl; it’s not as bad as sed.” Could really apply to everything. “Php; It's not as bad as Perl” (maybe). “Java; It's not as bad as C++”, etc. Thinkgeek, are you listening? Would make an awesome geek coffeecup/T-shirt set.
- charliesome 14y ago
  > “Php; It's not as bad as Perl” PHP is not as bad as Perl, it's worse.
  - jacquesm 14y ago
    That depends on which version of PHP you're comparing with which version of Perl. Both have their strong points, both have their weak points.
FreakLegion 14y ago
Slight tangent: Anyone interested in the substance of the post should also read Russ Cox's "Regular Expression Matching Can Be Simple And Fast" for why Friedl is wrong: http://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/regexp1.html http://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/regexp1.html
- alxndr 14y ago
  That was a fun paper to skim, thanks for the link. Gonna peek at the other links in the Summary section at the bottom.
MaysonL 14y ago
Some people, when confronted with a problem, think “I know, I’ll quote Jamie Zawinski.” Now they have two problems. Attributed to Mark Pilgrim in a comment at http://shreevatsa.wordpress.com/2009/06/23/who-said-that/ http://shreevatsa.wordpress.com/2009/06/23/who-said-that/
bitwize 14y ago
Funny, I found myself referencing jwz when I called Wayland a CADT-compliant approach to the problems with X.
Mahn 14y ago
Perhaps it's just me, but I find surreal how discussions on the internet 16 years ago were pretty much as they are today.
- ordinary 14y ago
  http://www.pompeiana.org/resources/ancient/graffiti%20from%20pompeii.htm http://www.pompeiana.org/resources/ancient/graffiti%20from%2... It's translations of Roman graffiti found in Pompeii. If you're surprised human nature hasn't changed in 16 years, prepare to be flabbergasted. :)
  - lemming 14y ago
    On April 19th, I made bread I guess Twitter was pretty much the same back then, too.
  - Mahn 14y ago
    We are some slow species when it comes to evolution it seems.
- epo 14y ago
  Its not surreal, just that people aren't moving on. Just solving the same problems over again using new toys; and often doing a poor job of it because they do not understand engineering fundamentals of their problem space.
teamonkey 14y ago
"You have a problem and decide to use threads. have two Now problems. you"
- Too 14y ago
  Some people, when confronted with a problem, think, 'I know, I'll use floating point arithmetic'. Now they have 2.000000000000000000001 problems.

145 points by thewarrior 14y ago

Today's relevant xkcd: http://xkcd.com/1171/ http://xkcd.com/1171/

raldi 14y ago

There's actually a little more to the story than that. On 2007-01-09, I wrote to David Tilbrook: Hi David .. I came across a web page (http://regex.info/blog/2006-09-15/247) investigating the source of the following quotation: "Whenever faced with a problem, some people say `Lets use _____.' Now, they have two problems." The author of the site seems to have gone through a lot of trouble to hunt down the original author of the quote. The best he was able to do was discover a Usenet sig from 1988 attributed to "D. Tilbrook." I was wondering if this was you -- if so, I think you should contact the author to set the record straight. His post was recently linked from the news aggregator site Reddit, at http://programming.reddit.com/info/xlov/comments and quite a few people have been reading the story and discussing the quote. He wrote back: I can lay claim to being the author, but I cannot remember when or where I first used it. Zalman Stern worked for me at CMU so may have quoted me, hence the attribution to him. Actually one of the funnier incidents regarding my "famous" quotes was: "Software is the only business in which adding extra lanes to the Golden Gate bridge would be called maintenance" -- David Tilbrook - circa 1981 I was at a meeting when the speaker used this quote and attributed it to David Parnas -- I was appropriately indignant. -- david P.S.: Do we know each other? The answer to his postscript was no. :) And he later replied again to add: By the way, I think I coined the phrase at a European conference in Dublin circa 1985. I was talking about the difficulty maintaining portable software when supposedly "standard" tools (e.g., awk(1)) differed from system to system. Then later someone pointed out to me that it was appearing in various signature lines which I suppose led to its being spread. I forwarded it all to Jeffrey Friedl (the author of the linked post), but I guess he figured the comments already did a good job covering the story, or maybe he wanted to get explicit permission from David to repost the emails but never got it. But I think David's reply is interesting and compuhistoric enough that I don't want it to die in my GMail archives -- and so I'm posting it again here.

homosaur 14y ago

Great article, thanks to the author for chasing down and cataloguing another entertaining and fine piece of geek lore.

lutusp 14y ago

It's a shame that regular expressions are so often associated with Perl, as though they're a single topic. It's like speaking of astronomy and astrology in the same breath.

mikeash 14y ago
"It's like speaking of astronomy and astrology in the same breath." Hmm... which is which?
- lutusp 14y ago
  Well, let's just say they're different. Also, I've been told there are ten astrologers for every astronomer. :)
  - chris_mahan 14y ago
    An astrologer has a question about stars. He says: "I know, I'll ask an astronomer." Now he has two problems. Sigh...
mhd 14y ago
"so often"? Really? That must be a rather particular age bracket, as newer programmers probably don't know Perl at all (apart from its reputation), and the old Unix-heads know that Perl itself didn't really invent them (or basically anything, as Larry Wall would be the first to admit). Sure, "Perl compatible" is a pretty common moniker (as in e.g. the "PCRE" library), as the POSIX (or original grep/sed) implementations are a bit anemic. And I don't think any of them deserves to be compared with astrology, but don't particularly care to get into that argument again. About as worthless as vim/emacs/IDE discussions.
- lutusp 14y ago
  > "so often"? Really? The relationship with Perl was a point made in the linked article. I personally don't use Perl any more, but I certainly use regular expressions. > And I don't think any of them deserves to be compared with astrology ... No, that wasn't meant as an analogy, just an example of contrasting entities that are sometimes confused. > About as worthless as vim/emacs/IDE discussions. Complete agreement.

ericb 14y ago

I have found holes in google's newsgroup archives previously. It surprises me because it should be such a small amount of data in today's terms. It has enough historical significance that you'd think they'd care for it better given their mission to organize the world's data and make it universally accessible.

snowwrestler 14y ago
The problems with the Google Groups Deja News archive have been well-documented; Google has acknowledged them but essentially said "not worth our time to fix." I don't have the direct link to it handy, unfortunately, but I'm pretty sure my memory is correct. Personally I suspect that the only reason they haven't just taken down the old Deja archive entirely is that they know the press and tech community would give them hell for doing it. So they let it linger on in this sort of compromised state.
- koralatov 14y ago
  That's a real shame. Another option would be to hand over a copy of the complete archive to another part[y|ies], who can then distribute it as they please. Since the data has no real commercial value, I don't see the harm in doing that. I also don't see it ever happening, sadly...
  - snowwrestler 14y ago
    I feel like it is a relic of a Google Past: the search company that wanted to organize the world's information and make it findable. Today's Google seems to be a product company that wants to imitate other major tech companies and beat them at their own game (Google Apps -> Microsoft, Android -> Apple, Google+ -> Facebook).
    - smackmybishop 14y ago
      Google bought Android two years before the iPhone came out.

breck 14y ago

Interesting quote by Zawinski in the comments: Third: obviously I got Kelly’s joke about “streams of bytes”, uh, that’s why I quoted it. It’s funny, and it makes the point (which I fully agree with) that the decades-old Unix “pipe” model is just plain dumb, because it forces you to think of everything as serializable text, even things that are fundamentally not text, or that are not sensibly serializable.

MattBearman 14y ago

...and now I understand today's XKCD [0] - I'd never heard this quote 'til today either. All is right with the world again :) [0] - http://xkcd.com/1171/ http://xkcd.com/1171/

bo1024 14y ago
You have a problem, so you code a solution in Perl. Now you have at least three problems.
mhb 14y ago
In future similar situations, the xkcd individual thread forum may help: http://forums.xkcd.com/viewforum.php?f=7 http://forums.xkcd.com/viewforum.php?f=7
- juan_juarez 14y ago
  ...or this wiki: http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php
abjr 14y ago
I'm surprised no one mentioned this one: http://xkcd.com/208/ http://xkcd.com/208/

rplst8 14y ago

That broken link in the article is working fine for me. Did Google repair the issues with the Deja News archive?

nathanstitt 14y ago

I like the backhanded comment jwz pays Perl in the comments. To paraphrase: “Perl; it’s not as bad as sed.” Could really apply to everything. “Php; It's not as bad as Perl” (maybe). “Java; It's not as bad as C++”, etc. Thinkgeek, are you listening? Would make an awesome geek coffeecup/T-shirt set.

charliesome 14y ago
> “Php; It's not as bad as Perl” PHP is not as bad as Perl, it's worse.
- jacquesm 14y ago
  That depends on which version of PHP you're comparing with which version of Perl. Both have their strong points, both have their weak points.

FreakLegion 14y ago

Slight tangent: Anyone interested in the substance of the post should also read Russ Cox's "Regular Expression Matching Can Be Simple And Fast" for why Friedl is wrong: http://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/regexp1.html http://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/regexp1.html

alxndr 14y ago
That was a fun paper to skim, thanks for the link. Gonna peek at the other links in the Summary section at the bottom.

MaysonL 14y ago

Some people, when confronted with a problem, think “I know, I’ll quote Jamie Zawinski.” Now they have two problems. Attributed to Mark Pilgrim in a comment at http://shreevatsa.wordpress.com/2009/06/23/who-said-that/ http://shreevatsa.wordpress.com/2009/06/23/who-said-that/

bitwize 14y ago

Funny, I found myself referencing jwz when I called Wayland a CADT-compliant approach to the problems with X.

Mahn 14y ago

Perhaps it's just me, but I find surreal how discussions on the internet 16 years ago were pretty much as they are today.

ordinary 14y ago
http://www.pompeiana.org/resources/ancient/graffiti%20from%20pompeii.htm http://www.pompeiana.org/resources/ancient/graffiti%20from%2... It's translations of Roman graffiti found in Pompeii. If you're surprised human nature hasn't changed in 16 years, prepare to be flabbergasted. :)
- lemming 14y ago
  On April 19th, I made bread I guess Twitter was pretty much the same back then, too.
- Mahn 14y ago
  We are some slow species when it comes to evolution it seems.
epo 14y ago
Its not surreal, just that people aren't moving on. Just solving the same problems over again using new toys; and often doing a poor job of it because they do not understand engineering fundamentals of their problem space.

teamonkey 14y ago

"You have a problem and decide to use threads. have two Now problems. you"

Too 14y ago
Some people, when confronted with a problem, think, 'I know, I'll use floating point arithmetic'. Now they have 2.000000000000000000001 problems.