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73 pointsprakash18 comments

It's a pity that this has the top slot because it provides no technical information about what optimizations he made and it doesn't have any benchmark information.

It's just "Hey, look at me, I'm Linus and I optimized some C code to make it fast". I would much rather see him give us some insight into optimization strategies for different architectures. He appears to know about that, but not share it.

Oddly, he was talking about how the Mozilla SHA1 code was faster than OpenSSL back in 2005: http://www.mail-archive.com/git@vger.kernel.org/msg01138.htm...

Hmm? Just one click away is this:

http://git.kernel.org/?p=git/git.git;a=commitdiff;h=66c9c6c0...

Provides benchmarks and explanation, and code. What more do you want?

Edit. RE: OpenSSL/MozillaSHA speed: He was comparing PowerPC speeds at that time, and is now obviously back on Intel.

Think of lightweight articles about SHA1 rewrites in order to pull the requirements of the OpenSSL libraries out of GIT as the HN version of idle gossip.

Not every article has to be serious, and of foundational importance. Some sites have pictures of funny animals. This one has Kernel Developer insight into their OCD desires to defeat the compiler from messing up their code...

Our mental abilities start to dwindle at 27 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7945569.stm

So Linus wants to dump libcrypt in git by rolling his own to speed up the test suite by a "couple of seconds?"

Good for Linus-- I guess.

He's not rolling out his own libcrypt. He's fixing a bug: i.e. getting rid of the unnecessary dependency on a huge library (OpenSSH) just because of a hashing function. This is systems programming, not a brainless enterprise data pumping: you get rid of unnecessary dependencies if you want to run on cell phones and blade servers at the same time.

If all he wanted was to dump a dependency, it would have been easier to cut-and-paste a slightly slower implementation from another library. I think he's saying he enjoyed it. The benchmarks are just after-the-fact justification.

This provides a valuable insight into Linux culture. There have been many cases where the micro-optimization obsession has displaced effort from the "big picture".

A lot of times, micro-optimizations are more fun.

In a hobbyist culture, we tend to do what is most fun.

> Did I mention that I seem to have some OCD issues?

As an advertising guy I love how L is basically saying: when submitting to reddigg print "Linus Torvalds has problems with OCD".

Can it be used against him? I think it's common knowledge by now that mild OCD is a job requirement.

As a programming guy I can tell you mild OCD is basically a requirement for programmers.

I meant my comment as a positive hint to things like this Linus did in the past. Linus always was a good advertiser.

What are OCD issues anyway? First time I encounter the term.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OCD

One of the most common "mild" mental disorders.

Horribly-chosen HN titles FTL? I'm not even going to click through.

The site name next to the title tells more than the title, and yes, it was worth the read.

Only because it was quite short, though.

That's the original name of the post.

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