From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: lm at mcvoy.com (Larry McVoy) Date: Thu, 17 Dec 2020 10:00:48 -0800 Subject: [COFF] [SPAM] Re: [TUHS] Algol 68 and Unix (was cron and at ...) In-Reply-To: References: <0EA02917-243E-4612-9F7E-D370EE0A7C2E@ronnatalie.com> <20201217143558.GD13268@mcvoy.com> <20201217155039.GA13368@mcvoy.com> Message-ID: <20201217180048.GG13368@mcvoy.com> On Thu, Dec 17, 2020 at 10:57:13AM -0700, Warner Losh wrote: > On Thu, Dec 17, 2020 at 8:50 AM Larry McVoy wrote: > > > I told my people that it doesn't matter who wrote it 6 months from now, > > even if it was you, you are going to have to relearn the code to fix a > > bug in it. > > > > This goes double or triple for open source. 6 months from now, the odds are > 50/50 the original contributor is busy, unavailable at the moment or > otherwise gone if it wasn't one of the current top 20 contributors. > > Clever is almost always wrong... It's only right if the code is performance > critical and the cleverness gives better performance in a meaningful way. > And even then the bias is against being too clever. Most old guys get it. But my guys were seasoned and still would try and slip stuff in. I think it is part of being really smart, it's a puzzle for them and they "win" if they can do something clever. I always replied "It is write once, read many. Optimize for reads". It's depressing how much of my job was pounding that message home year after year.