Re:Was Knuth Really Framed?
by btilly on Thursday February 27, 2020 @03:34PM
(#22437486)
Did Knuth try to make his code reusable? Was it reusable? I think those are the key questions.
Not really.
Knuth focused on maintainability. McIlroy focused on reuse of existing code. These are very different, though both laudable, goals.
As an example consider the widely used program for mathematical typesetting, TeX. Knuth started work on it in 1978. Since 1988 it has only received bug fixes. Despite it being widely used, there have been no bug fixes needed since 2014. I cannot think of another program so widely used with such a good maintenance record.
However TeX itself reuses almost nothing.
No code that Doug McIlroy wrote has a maintenance record to match. But McIlroy was the original author of widely used programs including diff, echo, tr, and join. The combined works of Knuth are unlikely to have been reused in more ways by more people than diff alone.
Not really.
Knuth focused on maintainability. McIlroy focused on reuse of existing code. These are very different, though both laudable, goals.
As an example consider the widely used program for mathematical typesetting, TeX. Knuth started work on it in 1978. Since 1988 it has only received bug fixes. Despite it being widely used, there have been no bug fixes needed since 2014. I cannot think of another program so widely used with such a good maintenance record.
However TeX itself reuses almost nothing.
No code that Doug McIlroy wrote has a maintenance record to match. But McIlroy was the original author of widely used programs including diff, echo, tr, and join. The combined works of Knuth are unlikely to have been reused in more ways by more people than diff alone.