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From: derek@uwvax.UUCP (Derek Zahn)
Newsgroups: net.college
Subject: Re: Where have all the hackers gone?
Message-ID: <81@uwvax.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 15-Dec-84 15:40:09 EST
Article-I.D.: uwvax.81
Posted: Sat Dec 15 15:40:09 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 17-Dec-84 03:46:24 EST
References: <3138@utah-cs.UUCP> <676@clyde.UUCP>, <78@uwvax.UUCP> <679@clyde.UUCP>
Organization: U of Wisconsin CS Dept
Lines: 28

> Have you ever tried to maintain or understand some of these 'innovative'
> programs?
> -- 

Yes, I have.  And in general I find:

1) Hacked code written by high-schoolers and others without formal training
   is difficult and unreadable.

2) Given formal (university) training, the code produced by the hackers I
   have known is quite readable.

In fact, the most unreadable code I know is the system source for unix.  Of
course, how much of a "hack" is 4.2BSD?  A question perhaps up for debate....

P. S.  (Just a guess) It seems likely that the 4.2 kernel was originally
written with meaningful variable names, and then these were substituted
for the short meaningless ones we see in order to save on disk space.  If
this is true, does anyone know of kernel source still retaining the 
easier-to-read variables?  I would be willing to sacrifice some disk space
for a kernel that was easier to read.

derek

-- 
Derek Zahn @ wisconsin
...!{allegra,heurikon,ihnp4,seismo,sfwin,ucbvax,uwm-evax}!uwvax!derek
derek@wisc-rsch.arpa