4 ms·

Reminds me of this old Zed Shaw essay: http://zedshaw.com/essays/master_and_expert.html http://zedshaw.com/essays/master_and_expert.html I think at least two

Reminds me of this old Zed Shaw essay: http://zedshaw.com/essays/master_and_expert.html http://zedshaw.com/essays/master_and_expert.html I think at least two of Go's designers, Ken Thompson and Rob Pike, are true programming masters. Note: When I posted this comment before, I accidentally pasted the wrong URL.

gngeal 13y ago
I’d love someday to hear a young coder tell a story about someone they idolized like, “There was this guy I worked with who once optimized a complicated red- black tree getting 300% performance boost. I was baffled and ask, ‘How’d you do that? That’s impossible.’ To which he responded…” “‘That’s my linked list my son.’” I believe that this is exactly what Niklaus Wirth did in the Oberon compiler.
- stcredzero 13y ago
  You sure it wasn't skip lists?
  - gngeal 13y ago
    Not unless he had a TARDIS at his disposal. I mean, skip lists were discovered in 1989, and by that time, the Oberon compiler had already existed for a few years. I don't recall the source now (I'd have to dig for it) but I believe that the Wirth anectode referred to his intervention in a case of overzealous students some time before that.
Osmium 13y ago
Interesting essay, thanks for the link. I found this part interesting, in contrast to his "expert amateurs" like Knuth: > In contrast there are masters in the martial arts who learned their art as a means of survival and became masters in a realistic and hostile environment. We don’t have anyone like this in the programming profession, or at least I haven’t met any. Any candidates spring to mind? John Carmack maybe? I'm sure there are loads though.
rwallace 13y ago
Great essay, but Shaw is mistaken about one thing: our art is old enough indeed. Unix and C in particular were created precisely as he describes.
- andrewflnr 13y ago
  I don't think Unix is quite what he had in mind. Not all simplicity comes from mastery.
  - rwallace 13y ago
    But Unix did, specifically from hard lessons learned from the failure of Multics. Sure, we now know some aspects of Unix to be suboptimal design, but that's with further decades of collective experience and even today the right answers are not yet entirely clear.

gngeal 13y ago

I’d love someday to hear a young coder tell a story about someone they idolized like, “There was this guy I worked with who once optimized a complicated red- black tree getting 300% performance boost. I was baffled and ask, ‘How’d you do that? That’s impossible.’ To which he responded…” “‘That’s my linked list my son.’” I believe that this is exactly what Niklaus Wirth did in the Oberon compiler.

stcredzero 13y ago
You sure it wasn't skip lists?
- gngeal 13y ago
  Not unless he had a TARDIS at his disposal. I mean, skip lists were discovered in 1989, and by that time, the Oberon compiler had already existed for a few years. I don't recall the source now (I'd have to dig for it) but I believe that the Wirth anectode referred to his intervention in a case of overzealous students some time before that.

Osmium 13y ago

Interesting essay, thanks for the link. I found this part interesting, in contrast to his "expert amateurs" like Knuth: > In contrast there are masters in the martial arts who learned their art as a means of survival and became masters in a realistic and hostile environment. We don’t have anyone like this in the programming profession, or at least I haven’t met any. Any candidates spring to mind? John Carmack maybe? I'm sure there are loads though.

rwallace 13y ago

Great essay, but Shaw is mistaken about one thing: our art is old enough indeed. Unix and C in particular were created precisely as he describes.

andrewflnr 13y ago
I don't think Unix is quite what he had in mind. Not all simplicity comes from mastery.
- rwallace 13y ago
  But Unix did, specifically from hard lessons learned from the failure of Multics. Sure, we now know some aspects of Unix to be suboptimal design, but that's with further decades of collective experience and even today the right answers are not yet entirely clear.