🚀 go-pugleaf

Submitted-by: brnstnd@KRAMDEN.ACF.NYU.EDU (D. J. Bernstein)

Henry Spencer writes:
> You just canNOT find these problems without writing code from the spec.
> Nothing else works.

Seems about time to repeat this:

What makes standard-writing so attractive is that it strokes your ego.
You get to write down your musings about how the world should work, and
boom! Everyone does what you say. You don't have to waste time actually
*implementing* your ideas, or working out the problems, or competing
with people who were foolish enough to try their non-POSIX-approved
products on the market. You've got an _ego standard_.

This psychological explanation may sound a bit nasty, but it explains a
lot. It explains why POSIX members react emotionally to any hint that
their standards don't reflect the real world or are technically
inferior. It explains why no POSIX ``standard'' describes the state of
any actual system at the time of standardization. It explains why POSIX
people are so incredibly enthusiastic about writing standards, when in
the real world writing a standard means drudging through existing
documentation and rehashing it in the dullest possible language.

I wish POSIX would stop shooting off into the cosmos, come back to
earth, and spend some time documenting what UNIX systems actually *do*.

---Dan

Volume-Number: Volume 29, Number 34