lispython
Joined 17 years ago
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5,260
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499
Member since
May 18
either do something beautiful or useful
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Comment · 3 years ago
A veritable hero of our times boasts a mere 688 followers on his Twitter account: https://twitter.com/RobertMMetcalfe (as of the dispatch of this message).
Comment · 9 years ago
You should use "favorite" (a new feature) instead of upvote.
Comment · 10 years ago
Nice metaphor.
Comment · 10 years ago
Hi Alan, I'm an editor at Programmer Magazine in China[1], could you allow me to translate your answers into Chinese, and share with readers in China?
Comment · 10 years ago
Recalling those past days, is there any idea that not yet really played an important role, but to be forgotten?
Especially we are losing the initial generation of programmers.
Comment · 10 years ago
Hi Alan,
Have you ever made serious mistake? That if given an opportunity, you would start over with a different approach.
Comment · 10 years ago
Hi Alan,
Comparing how you think about doing research now with how you thought when you were starting out, what is the biggest change in your thinking?
Comment · 10 years ago
Both of them remind me Plan 9's "single most important feature"[1]:
> all mounted file servers export the same file-system-like interface, regardless of the implementation behind them. Some might correspond to local file systems, some to remote file systems accessed over a network, some to instances of system servers running in user space (like the window system or an alternate network stack), and some to kernel interfaces. To users and client programs, all these cases look alike.
And Rob Pike once said[2]:
> When I was on Plan 9, everything was connected and uniform. Now everything isn't connected, just connected to the cloud, which isn't the same thing. And uniform? Far from it, except in mediocrity. This is 2012 and we're still stitching together little microcomputers with HTTPS and ssh and calling it revolutionary. I sorely miss the unified system view of the world we had at Bell Labs, and the way things are going that seems unlikely to come back any time soon.