[COFF] [SPAM] Re: [TUHS] Algol 68 and Unix (was cron and at ...)

[Larry McVoy]

On Thu, Dec 17, 2020 at 10:57:13AM -0700, Warner Losh wrote:
> On Thu, Dec 17, 2020 at 8:50 AM Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> 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.