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A particularly fine example of a bug journal (not exactly a debugging journal) is the one kept by Donald Knuth for his TeX typesetting system. The list is at h
by gjm11 13y ago
A particularly fine example of a bug journal (not exactly a debugging journal) is the one kept by Donald Knuth for his TeX typesetting system.
The list is at http://texdoc.net/texmf-dist/doc/generic/knuth/errata/errorlog.pdf; http://texdoc.net/texmf-dist/doc/generic/knuth/errata/errorl... the fairly long and very interesting paper he wrote about it ("The Errors of TeX") unfortunately doesn't seem to be freely available, but there's a very short informal article (also by Knuth) about it at http://www.tug.org/TUGboat/tb10-4/tb26knut.pdf http://www.tug.org/TUGboat/tb10-4/tb26knut.pdf.
He classifies all the errors he's ever found (or had found by others) into 15 categories. (Here "errors" includes "enhancements found to be a good idea", just as in many issue-tracking systems.) In the full "Errors" paper he has much to say about each category, including concrete examples and more philosophical ruminations.
- a_bonobo 13y agoYou have a slight typo in that first link, HN interpreted the semicolon as part of the link, fixed: http://texdoc.net/texmf-dist/doc/generic/knuth/errata/errorlog.pdf http://texdoc.net/texmf-dist/doc/generic/knuth/errata/errorl...
- taspeotis 13y agoThis one stuck out for me: * Time sharing is very slow today, so I'm mostly reading technical reports while waiting three hours for compiler, editor, and loading routine. * I'm not counting this as debugging time! * (Came back in the evening.) For reference, you can compile the Linux kernel in as few as eight minutes [1]. [1] http://askubuntu.com/a/244148 http://askubuntu.com/a/244148
- a_bonobo 13y agoBy time-sharing, does he mean sharing computing time on a cluster? I work on my university's cluster and on bad days, my jobs are queued for 4 hours and then run for 20 minutes...
- taspeotis 13y agoI didn't know time sharing was still a thing.
- mattstreet 13y agoYeah for clusters/super computers...I mean you'd think more than one person wants to use them right?
- pseut 13y agoDude, you didn't even look at the pdf did you. That was the entry for 13 Mar 1978
- a_bonobo 13y agoI'm pretty sure clusters changed in their architecture and their processing power, but you still have to stand in line
- timtadh 13y agoIn 1978 Time Sharing Machines refers to single machines with multi-tasking. ex. the terminal you are using right now. So you don't have to "wait in line" you have to share resources. Just like your web-browser shares resources with your editor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-sharing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-sharing esr also has a good article: http://catb.org/jargon/html/T/timesharing.html http://catb.org/jargon/html/T/timesharing.html