[TUHS] Re: Has this been discussed on-list? How Unix changed Software.

[Larry McVoy <lm@mcvoy.com>]

I've never heard the claim that the kernel was "defect free", as a 
fisherman that sort of feels like saying "I always get fish" which is
a sure fire way to make sure you get none on the next trip :-)

I do get "Deliberately wrote consistent, high quality code." as that is
a choice.  If you look through the code my team wrote, I think you'll
find the same.  But everyone has to be committed to that level of 
coding or it goes to shit pretty quickly.  Super pleasant when the
whole team wants the code to be like that.

I'd be willing to say that you could find a bug very quickly in our
code but to claim that it is bug free is a bridge too far for me.

On Wed, Sep 07, 2022 at 11:40:04AM +1000, steve jenkin wrote:
> Doug, Larry et al,
> 
> Thanks very much for the history - unaware of those stories/ facts.
> I???ve scanned the 1989 Miller et al paper, will read properly soon.
> The legacy of that paper is the extensive automatic testing now commonplace in large Open Software projects.
> 
> I wasn't clear in what I wrote. Have been immersed in early papers of teaching the kernel at UNSW :(
> Reminds on this list precise terms matter: that ???Unix??? / UNIX (tm) and "the kernel" (+ version) are very different.
> 
> I meant the V5 / V6 kernel was ???known defect free', hadn???t thought of Userland / utilities & libraries :(
> From what I???ve read: distribution tapes, pre-USG, were created from the current copy of ???the system??? - not sure which machine that was, presumably one controlled by Ken.
> 
> Is that a reasonable statement, the kernel, pre-USG, had zero (known) Technical Debt when shipped?
> 
> I???ve read that Ken wrote the kernel with an eye to it being a coding exemplar.
> Deliberately wrote consistent, high quality code.
> 
> Is that another mis-interpretation of mine?
> 
> regards
> steve j
> 
> > On 7 Sep 2022, at 01:07, Douglas McIlroy <douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu> wrote:
> > 
> >> (Research) Unix ... 'shipped' with zero known bugs.
> > 
> > It wasn't a Utopia. Right from the start man pages reported BUGS,
> > though many were infelicities, not implementation errors.
> 
> --
> Steve Jenkin, IT Systems and Design 
> 0412 786 915 (+61 412 786 915)
> PO Box 38, Kippax ACT 2615, AUSTRALIA
> 
> mailto:sjenkin@canb.auug.org.au http://members.tip.net.au/~sjenkin

-- 
---
Larry McVoy           Retired to fishing          http://www.mcvoy.com/lm/boat