From: Russell Leighton <russ@elegant-software.com>
To: LKML <linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org>
Subject: OT: Does Linux have any "Perfect Code"
Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 20:21:04 -0500 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <c9d133bdb3481fbc01a572d948049f5e@elegant-software.com> (raw)
Bryan Cantrill of Sun (ala DTrace) has a notion of perfect code:
http://blogs.sun.com/bmc/entry/on_i_dreaming_in_code
He also has some examples (from bottom comment section of above):
>
>
> Can you list a small number of examples of "software perfection"?
>
> Posted by Russell Leighton on November 14, 2007 at 04:02 AM PST #
>
> Russell,
>
> My canonical small example of perfection in Solaris would be Jeff
> Bonwick's mod-by-a-billion code in hrt2ts():
>
> http://cvs.opensolaris.org/source/xref/onnv/onnv-gate/usr/src/uts/
> common/os/timers.c#875
>
> Solaris of course has lots of bigger, more complicated examples. Now
> on the one hand, one wants to refrain from pointing to thousands of
> lines of code and saying that there are no bugs therein, but on the
> other, there are many subsystems that have been in place and in heavy
> use for years without defect or modification. At the risk of being
> egocentric, the cyclic subsystem (which is executed at least 100 times
> per second on every Solaris system) had its last substantial fix over
> six years ago, and its last fix of any flavor over three years ago:
>
> http://cvs.opensolaris.org/source/xref/onnv/onnv-gate/usr/src/uts/
> common/os/cyclic.c
>
> Modesty (and the lack, of course, of a proof of its correctness)
> prevents me from calling the cyclic subsystem perfect -- but such as
> unknown defects remain, there are damn few of them, and we can say
> that they must be a result of highly usual (or at least, heretofore
> unseen) circumstances.
>
> A non-Solaris example -- and one that I've been known to use as the
> canonical example of the persistence of software -- is Super Mario
> Kart. This is a game that was developed (to its completion) fifteen
> years ago for the Super Nintendo console. Source code, to the best of
> my knowledge, is not publicly available and may indeed be lost -- but
> the binaries persist and (if my coworkers are any indication) remain
> in active use. Given the longevity of, say, Homer's Odyssey, there is
> reason to believe that Super Mario Kart will survive in perpetuity --
> that thousands of years from now, twenty-somethings somewhere will be
> using the software exactly as it is used today. Is this perfection?
> Perhaps not -- but it also might not be discernible from perfection...
>
> Posted by Bryan Cantrill on November 14, 2007 at 07:51 AM PST #
Does Linux have any such examples true software perfection?
next reply other threads:[~2007-11-15 1:21 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 10+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2007-11-15 1:21 Russell Leighton [this message]
2007-11-15 1:33 ` David Miller
2007-11-15 6:29 ` Eric Dumazet
2007-11-15 7:11 ` David Miller
2007-11-15 7:43 ` Andi Kleen
2007-11-15 8:27 ` Philippe Elie
2007-11-15 13:16 ` Michael Gerdau
2007-11-15 15:10 ` Daniel Barkalow
2007-11-17 8:44 ` Geert Uytterhoeven
2007-11-15 17:05 ` Chris Friesen
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