Timeline for Torvalds' quote about good programmer [closed]
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
40 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| S Apr 21, 2014 at 15:14 | history | notice added | ChrisF | Historical significance | |
| S Apr 21, 2014 at 15:14 | history | locked | ChrisF | ||
| Apr 21, 2014 at 15:14 | history | closed |
CommunityBot ChrisF |
Opinion-based | |
| Apr 14, 2014 at 6:56 | comment | added | gnat | recommended reading: Discuss this ${blog} | |
| Apr 14, 2014 at 0:48 | review | Close votes | |||
| Apr 14, 2014 at 23:54 | |||||
| Aug 22, 2013 at 21:22 | comment | added | Dave | I would also add Dijkstra's remark that "...our intellectual powers are rather geared to master static relations and that our powers to visualize processes evolving in time are relatively poorly developed." | |
| Mar 11, 2013 at 17:52 | comment | added | bopapa_1979 | I have a friend who used to use another quote that I like even more: "Most programmers think about things in terms of how they work. Great programmers think about them in terms of how they break." | |
| Oct 20, 2012 at 4:45 | answer | added | radarbob | timeline score: 2 | |
| S Sep 27, 2012 at 0:04 | answer | added | Daniel Shawcross Wilkerson | timeline score: 13 | |
| S Sep 27, 2012 at 0:04 | history | made wiki | Post Made Community Wiki by Daniel Shawcross Wilkerson | ||
| Sep 24, 2012 at 17:11 | answer | added | Bob | timeline score: -4 | |
| Sep 24, 2012 at 5:34 | comment | added | l1x | This explains why the Linux kernel is a mess :) | |
| Sep 23, 2012 at 21:09 | answer | added | octopusgrabbus | timeline score: 2 | |
| Sep 23, 2012 at 18:45 | comment | added | Jonathan Hartley | Does anyone have an example of a problem solved in each of the two contrasted styles, maybe a kata, which would make the idea concrete? | |
| Sep 23, 2012 at 18:11 | answer | added | eulerfx | timeline score: -2 | |
| Sep 23, 2012 at 17:25 | review | Close votes | |||
| Oct 1, 2012 at 3:00 | |||||
| Sep 23, 2012 at 16:59 | answer | added | Joel Jacobson | timeline score: 0 | |
| Sep 23, 2012 at 13:57 | comment | added | MathAttack | Very profound quote, and true in many dimensions. Is it smart to write the CSS before the HTML? | |
| Sep 23, 2012 at 13:57 | answer | added | MathAttack | timeline score: 0 | |
| Sep 23, 2012 at 13:06 | answer | added | Tudor Watson | timeline score: 1 | |
| Sep 23, 2012 at 5:00 | answer | added | mc2 | timeline score: 1 | |
| Sep 4, 2012 at 13:13 | comment | added | Ryan Kinal | @kojiro Language will, of course, matter for implementation, but there are very few times when you can't express your solution in whichever language you want. Some might be more difficult, or you may have to modify your solution slightly, but it usually doesn't matter much at all. | |
| Sep 1, 2012 at 18:23 | comment | added | Sid | IMHO it is referring to functional aspect of programming. | |
| Sep 1, 2012 at 2:10 | comment | added | Jörg W Mittag | Torvalds is not alone in this, by the way: "Show me your flowchart and conceal your tables, and I shall continue to be mystified. Show me your tables, and I won't usually need your flowchart; it'll be obvious." – Fred Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month. "Show me your code and conceal your data structures, and I shall continue to be mystified. Show me your data structures, and I won't usually need your code; it'll be obvious." and "Smart data structures and dumb code works a lot better than the other way around." – Eric S. Raymond, The Cathedral and The Bazaar. | |
| Sep 1, 2012 at 0:10 | answer | added | Tom Au | timeline score: 2 | |
| Aug 31, 2012 at 23:45 | answer | added | Jay Atkinson | timeline score: 30 | |
| Aug 31, 2012 at 23:01 | answer | added | Jon Hanna | timeline score: 5 | |
| Aug 31, 2012 at 21:22 | comment | added | kojiro | @RyanKinal But of course the language does matter, because it makes it considerably easier to deal with and think about certain data structures. Think about all the languages that specialize in LISt Parsing, for example, or languages that have native support for data structures that have to be hacked into other languages, (sets and sparse arrays come to mind). | |
| Aug 31, 2012 at 18:59 | comment | added | Ryan Kinal | @JasonHolland That's pretty much it. Once you understand the data structures, the code is almost irrelevant. It becomes a matter of memory and/or reference. The complicated and interesting part is conceptually figuring everything out. I often solve problems and design solutions away from the keyboard. | |
| Aug 31, 2012 at 18:33 | comment | added | programmer | Maybe if you take the time making the data structures "elegant" then the code doesn't have to be convoluted to deal with these data structures? I'm probably too dumb to really know the meaning of Torvalds' quote. :} | |
| Aug 31, 2012 at 18:28 | answer | added | Karl Bielefeldt | timeline score: 324 | |
| Aug 31, 2012 at 18:18 | comment | added | Ryan Kinal | I think this question probably has multiple answers that are equally valid. But it's a good question anyway. I love that quote. It expresses why I don't understand programmers who worry about switching languages. It's rarely the language that matters in a program, it's the data structures and how they relate. | |
| Aug 31, 2012 at 18:01 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/#!/StackProgrammer/status/241596477099606016 | ||
| Aug 31, 2012 at 17:45 | answer | added | Daniel DiPaolo | timeline score: 14 | |
| Aug 31, 2012 at 17:36 | history | edited | yannis | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
edited body
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| Aug 31, 2012 at 17:33 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| Aug 31, 2012 at 17:35 | |||||
| Aug 31, 2012 at 17:20 | answer | added | GlenPeterson | timeline score: 12 | |
| Aug 31, 2012 at 17:09 | answer | added | zxcdw | timeline score: 59 | |
| Aug 31, 2012 at 17:08 | answer | added | Morons | timeline score: 29 | |
| Aug 31, 2012 at 17:06 | history | asked | beyeran | CC BY-SA 3.0 |