[HN Gopher] Coffee with Brian Kernighan [video]
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       Coffee with Brian Kernighan [video]
        
       Author : type0
       Score  : 107 points
       Date   : 2022-09-11 12:39 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.youtube.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.youtube.com)
        
       | ontouchstart wrote:
       | Mentioned in the video
       | 
       | https://github.com/onetrueawk/awk/tree/unicode-support
        
       | enw wrote:
       | I hate that I even feel like this, but I'm always in awe when old
       | people (in this case 80+ years old) talk in depth about software
       | with such fluency.
       | 
       | I know it's self-evident, but I'm so used to being around younger
       | folks in tech that it's really cool to see gray hairs.
        
         | PostOnce wrote:
         | Haha, this reminds me, I used to work at a startup social
         | network and I kept hearing from various people there that
         | "people over 30 don't understand tech"; buddy, who do you think
         | built the computer you're using and all of your software tools?
         | :p
        
           | brailsafe wrote:
           | I mean, I'm 30, and as a software dev, i sure as hell don't
           | understand tech lol
        
         | avg_dev wrote:
         | As someone approaching middle age, who has been coding
         | professionally for a long time, I can tell you without a shred
         | of doubt that I am a far stronger software developer than I was
         | five years ago. I was far stronger then than I was ten years
         | ago. The list could go on, but then you'd realize I'm really
         | old :)
        
         | systemvoltage wrote:
         | I've had the pleasure of working with 60+ year old programmers.
         | It is opposite of what you expect from the stereotypical
         | mainstream opinions. I constantly go back to them, call them
         | for lunch, go for walks, just so I can ask them questions about
         | old days and how things used to work. There is so much to learn
         | from hindsight, this knowledge is vanishing. Take advantage of
         | learning from older people even though it doesn't fit the
         | current trends. There is wisdom and experience under those
         | opinions, which can sometimes be a little harsh. Similarly,
         | read old computer books. Byte magazine has a full archive
         | online. Read user manuals of IBM 360 system. For entrepreneurs,
         | read old corporate press releases. Pull up a copy of
         | Westinghouse's 1978 annual report as you fall to sleep.
         | Fantastic stuff, I am enamored by history.
        
           | avg_dev wrote:
           | I find it interesting how stuff that was relevant for PCs in
           | the 80s became relevant for early smartphones. I believe
           | computing history often is cyclic in nature, so there is
           | value in the old ways.
        
             | systemvoltage wrote:
             | I always thought of any human progress like gradient
             | descent algo. Hindsight is clear, and if current
             | tools/services/methods/processes don't work, look at how it
             | used to be done. Was it better objectively? May be we took
             | a step in the wrong direction, go back and learn; try to
             | take in a different direction, may be there is a higher
             | ground ahead. It is also important to allow (and be
             | tolerant) to experimentation in different directions
             | because without it; we risk getting stuck in a local optima
             | forever. Opposite of that is Chesterton's fence, there is a
             | reason why we are on this hill, if you go back, it's a
             | steep cliff.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | janeway wrote:
       | His new book on his UNIX history is really good.
        
       | rasengan0 wrote:
       | Still in use, 45 years on, thank you Drs A.W.K. and Robbins!
       | 
       | Would love to purchase an updated book! - I sure hope that .ps of
       | the 1988 AWK book is lying around somewhere.
        
         | avg_dev wrote:
         | I remember back when I was studying programming at university
         | the prof was demonstrating something or other on the board. He
         | wrote a program in Java and it took about 15 lines. Someone
         | said they could do it in 5 in Perl or something. The prof
         | replied, "well I could do in one line of awk but that's not the
         | point..."
         | 
         | I'm watching the video now and Kernighan addresses exactly this
         | point. He talks about using the right tool for the job, about
         | matching only single patterns or else not using awk, the
         | general propose nature of Python, and more.
        
       | type0 wrote:
       | At least they discussed publishing tools, there surely needs to
       | be some better tools in-between troff/groff and LaTeX
        
         | rasengan0 wrote:
         | I think Prof Kernighan mentioned
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XeTeX
        
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