[TUHS] Re: Perkin-Elmer Sort/Merge II vs Unix sort(1)

[Douglas McIlroy <douglas.mcilroy@dartmouth.edu>]

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> To me this list is a real-life demonstration of the differences between
> the, prevalent at the time, thoughtless agglomeration of features into a
> monolith approach against Unix's careful separation of concerns and
> modularization via small tools.  The same contrast appears in a more
> contrived setting in J. Bentley's CACM Programming Pearl's column where
> Doug McIlroy critiques a unique word counting literate program written
> by Don Knuth [3].  (I slightly suspect that the initial program
> specification was a trap set up for Knuth.)

It wasn't a setup. Although Jon's introduction seems to imply that he had
invited both Don and me to participate, I actually was moved to write the
critique when I proofread the 2-author column, as I did for many of Jon's
Programming Pearls. That led to the 3-author arrangement. Knuth and
I are still friends; he even reprinted the critique. It is also memorably
depicted at https://comic.browserling.com/tag/douglas-mcilroy.

Doug

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