What Every Programmer Should Know About Memory (2007) [pdf]
people.freebsd.org
people.freebsd.org
As languages without MMM become more popular, it's really up to the compiler authors (or at least a subset of them) to get all of these details right.
While I agree every programmer does not need to know, calling it vacuous without reading is deeply insulting to such a useful document.
I read every page of it some years ago and will likely re-read it again soon as details fade.
Just like I wouldn't consider the "Goto's considered harmful" title to be vacuous despite the endless parade of copycats with "<Blah> considered harmful" articles and papers.
Since there are so few things that every programmer actually needs, please enjoy these latency numbers that I think will benefit just about every programmer: https://gist.github.com/jboner/2841832
Obviously is not about know every detail, but read the whole book will be more beneficial that read a small summary like: "This 10 weird tricks about relativity will make you popular!"
The article is well known and the author Ulrich Drepper is also well known in the FOSS world for his work on the GNU C Library. [1]
So I was surprised to find that he did not have a small English language Wikipedia page, even though there were pages in German, French, Norwegian, Japanese and Persian.
Oh, "that can't be right - I'll create one!", I thought. (By translating one of the existing pages.)
But I could not! The page "is protected from creation" [2].
An archived deletion discussion from 2014 states "This article fails Wikipedia:Notability (people), Wikipedia:Verifiability, and Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons and should be deleted." ... etc.
Edit: s/Dropper/Drepper/
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_C_Library
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulrich_Drepper
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletio...
Without the "fascist" administrators, Wikipedia would be an absolute spam-fest of corporate drivel, conspiracy theory nutjobs ... etc.
My point is that my gut reaction was that Ulrich Drepper was notable enough to have a small Wikipedia page, but it turned out that it had been quite clearly decided that he was not.
I would encourage you to learn a bit more about it first. It will not be following wikipedia down that path.
Ah yes - answered my own question - it seems likely that you are closely connected with Intergalactic. see this "Show HN: Infogalactic (infogalactic.com)" [1] that you submitted 252 days ago.
I did actually spend 10 minutes looking at the Infogalactic site before posting my reply.
The Introduction page [2] starts out all fine and dandy:
>Infogalactic does not share the highly centralized structure of Wikipedia or the ideological dogma of the Wikimedia Foundation. The primary requirements are for the information contributed to be true, relevant, and verifiable, rather than cited from a so-called “published reliable source”, since experience has proven how reliance upon the latter can be easily gamed by editors and administrators alike. There is no culture of notability, ideology, or deletionism at Infogalactic. The addition of perspective filters and two levels of Context and Opinion to every page means that the average editor's contribution is much less likely to be deleted for political reasons or fall victim to edit wars over controversial pages.
But then I read down to this bit:
>Infogalactic is a private corporation supported by donations and advertising revenue. ...
Sorry, but that doesn't work for me. I'd rather stick with the Wikimedia Foundation.
> I'd rather stick with the Wikimedia Foundation.
I don't care. I'm only aware of infogalactic because it's an alternative to wikipedia, which I sought out to begin with because of the very complaints you just made...
> "An archived deletion discussion from 2014 states "This article fails Wikipedia:Notability (people), Wikipedia:Verifiability, and Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons and should be deleted." ... etc."
Show HNs are for posting your own projects, so of course the parent would assume a close connection from you posting one.
https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html : Show HN is a way to share something that you've made on Hacker News.
>I would encourage you to learn a bit more about it first.
When I'd already checked "them" out, and decided it wasn't for me.
Also, as @detaro points out, a Show HN is clearly documented as for your own work.
Furthermore, it turns out that you have multiple HN accounts - that comes across as scammy to me.
None of them are active. I've quit the site more than once. I can't imagine why...
OK - fair enough on the multiple HN accounts.
Your posts do come across as pushing Infogalactic quite strongly though, which is why I looked at your profile for your past submissions, and found the Show HN.
I'm starting a draft page now - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Ulrich_Drepper
See my 3rd reference above from 2010:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletio...
Ulrich has accomplished so much as a programmer, more than nearly any programmer ever will. If we measured contributions objectively, he'd definitely be one of those "1% of programmers who produce 95% of software that is used by more than 1000 people". In fact, I just grepped for 'Ulrich Drepper' on my own personal computer and I've got pages-upon-pages of results (at least 2kloc) of bylines, commits, man pages and tiny thank you notes with only one recipient (Ulrich) deep in places you expect and then many you don't: the Android SDK, Coreutils, Wine project.
When you do a bit of research about him (of the variety Wikipedia would accept), there's a different story. There are no awards for Ulrich Drepper, there are no 'real' publications outside of open source that are describing what he does, there are no lively pieces of evidence that the world recognizes his contributions, there most certainly are no fanclubs.
What does emerge is a consistent message that the big players of free software wont tolerate him or his software (along with thousands of 'critiques' of his leadership style). Looking over this you see a pattern that emerges where an issue is brought up on a mailing list by people who are trying to help him or at the very least are neutral towards him and he cuts them down, insults them, belittles them for absolutely no reason whatsoever ("I have to let them know that they are dumb so they don't write software that hurts the world"). It's so comically obvious that he doesn't actually believe he's making "software" or "the world" any better while he's doing this.
I'm not sure why, but reading about Ulrich Drepper has put the broader world of software in perspective. I've never thought about the 'legitimacy' of Linus Torvald's (and others) management style. I have even been known to think that "asshole bosses get shit done". I had never seen what comes out for the projects that aren't Linux. The smaller & more mundane pieces of software whose petty tyrant isn't tolerated for long.
My initial feeling was that Ulrich Drepper deserves a Wikipedia page, but the evidence is that the deletionist might be right. Ulrich Drepper is not widely recognized because he has let his pride, his hubris and his attachment to criticism condemn him to a life of loneliness and anonymity with no indications that he wants either.
>My initial feeling was that Ulrich Drepper deserves a Wikipedia page, but the evidence is that the deletionist might be right.
Should niceness/sociablity/etc be a criteria for notability and hence "deserving" a Wikipedia page?
I'd argue that it should not.
Linus Torvalds, Stephen Wolfram, Steve Jobs - none of them seem particularly nice - but all have achieved great things - and hence they are notable.
The difference from the case of Ulrich Drepper, is that those achievements are documented in a form that Wikipedia will accept as evidence for notability.