Comment by thoughtpolice | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thoughtpolice | Hacker News Reader

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Are you being serious, or just trying to sound super philosophical about why "less is more"? I assume it's the latter, because it shouldn't take very much thought to see why HTTP servers are fairly complex pieces of software, given the purpose they serve - a class of software that is ruthlessly optimized in today's world - nor should it take very much thought to see this HTTP server is actually ridiculously inefficient compared to any modern one. You know, wasting all those precious CPU cycles you opine so much about?

(Now, if you want to talk about the actual efficacy of HTTP vs other stateless protocols, that's a different story... But I doubt we're going to go there in a thread about an assembly HTTP server where people are ooh'ing over the achivement. Not that it isn't cool, TBQF.)

Programmers at large really need to stop being pretend philosophers clutching at straws about "why things are so darn bad today!!!" (among other psuedo philosophical positions). They're mostly terrible at it, and it's almost always just so damn hamfisted and full of itself.

Please be a little more charitable when commenting on HN.

There is a long (albeit minority) tradition of thinking this way in computing, one that values small, intelligible systems as the best way for humans to work with computers. An example of this philosophy surfaced here recently (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9689800) and there are countless others.

HN itself has a rich history with this model. It was created by a practitioner of it, is written in a language inspired by it, and the smallness and intelligibility of the code are always on our minds when we work on it.

We need more projects like this. They are deeply satisfying systems to build and work with, because they're human-scale in the way that behemoth software is not.

>There is a long (albeit minority) tradition of thinking this way in computing...

It seems close to the Occam's razor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor

I like this quote from Chuck Moore (from Forth).

"We need dedicated programmers who commit their careers to single applications. Rewriting them over and over until they’re perfect. Such people will never exist. The world is too full of more interesting things to do. The only hope is to abandon complex software. Embrace simple."

https://www.simple-talk.com/opinion/geek-of-the-week/chuck-m...

Thank you for helping fight the Dijkstras of this world.

thoughtpolice: "because it shouldn't take very much thought to see why HTTP servers are fairly complex pieces of software"

Dijkstra: "He was the first to make the claim that programming is so inherently complex that (...)" (from Wikipedia)

Down with industry pessimists and "astronauts" that think everything must be complex.

Wow, chillax boy!

You did overlook the ";)", right? I did not intend to pluck that string of yours. Sorry about that.

I chided thoughtpolice for being a little uncharitable, but this comment breaks the HN guidelines outright. It's unsubstantive and uncivil (though I don't think you meant it to be). Please don't post such things.

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