From: scj@yaccman.com (scj@yaccman.com)
Subject: [TUHS] Is the Teletype the unsung hero of Unix?
Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2016 13:12:44 -0700 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <2f2abee9b63b79d22de436ad6b373037.squirrel@webmail.yaccman.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <56F5A7BF.4050300@aueb.gr>
> On 25/03/2016 16:43, Aharon Robbins wrote:
>> I have long theorized that the reason for the short names is that since
>> typing was so physically demanding, it was natural to make the command
>> names (and all the rest) be short and easier to type. I don't know if
>> this was a conscious decision, but I suspect it more likely to have been
>> an unconscious / natural one.
>
> In a paper we will present at this year's International Conference on
> Software Engineering we show (among other things) that the mean length
> of identifiers in Unix C source code has risen from 3.5 to 7.5
> characters from 1973 until today. We also observed a corresponding rise
> in the length of lines and files. Better terminals can be one reason for
> this rise. Other possible reasons may be increased software complexity
> as well as CPU power and memory that allowed the processing of more
> verbose code.
>
> I've uploaded a preprint at
> http://www.dmst.aueb.gr/dds/pubs/conf/2016-ICSE-ProgEvol/html/SLK16.pdf
>
>
... and I once heard an old-timer growl at a young programmer "I've
written boot loaders that were shorter than your variable names!"
Steve
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2016-03-28 20:12 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 26+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2016-03-25 14:43 Aharon Robbins
2016-03-25 19:47 ` Jaap Akkerhuis
2016-03-25 21:03 ` Diomidis Spinellis
2016-03-28 20:12 ` scj [this message]
2016-04-01 14:06 ` Dave Horsfall
2016-04-01 22:41 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2016-03-25 21:29 ` [TUHS] Command-line options Warren Toomey
2016-03-25 23:25 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2016-03-26 2:10 ` John Cowan
2016-03-26 3:09 ` Charles Anthony
2016-03-26 19:43 ` Clem Cole
2016-03-26 20:54 ` Ronald Natalie
2016-03-26 22:05 ` John Cowan
2016-03-27 1:25 ` Dave Horsfall
2016-03-27 1:50 ` Charles Anthony
2016-03-27 2:01 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2016-03-27 6:18 ` Random832
2016-03-27 6:57 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2016-03-27 19:38 ` Dave Horsfall
2016-03-27 1:35 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2016-03-26 3:54 ` [TUHS] Is the Teletype the unsung hero of Unix? Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2016-03-26 4:30 ` Steve Nickolas
2016-03-26 5:44 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2016-03-26 8:33 ` Steve Nickolas
[not found] <mailman.1.1459562401.20104.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
2016-04-02 2:17 ` Johnny Billquist
2016-04-02 2:35 ` Charles Anthony
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