Re: [dwm] improve config.mk

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the discussion. This mailing list rocks.

Thanks guys,
Jonathan.

On 9/8/06, Ville Koskinen <vrkosk_AT_utu.fi> wrote:
> > > On Sep 7, 2006, at 4:13 AM, Sander van Dijk wrote:
> > > >Optimization is far overrated,
>
> I remember Andrew S. Tanenbaum describing a student that spent several
> months optimizing the filesystem initialization (or formatting) program
> for the Minix file system in 1980s. He got it to run from one minute to
> a few seconds on a given disk. Tanenbaum said (paraphrasing) that the
> whole work was pretty useless, as the disk is usually initialized once
> per operating system install, and it is irrelevant if it takes a minute
> or a second at the installation phase. This incident may be in his book
> Modern Operating Systems, although I'm not sure if I read it from there
> or somewhere else.
>
> I'd like to point out that although optimization is overrated, it is
> wise to create systems that are optimal or semi-optimal by design.
> Most often those solutions are also the shortest and most elegant ones.
> I wouldn't call that optimizing, because the verb "to optimize" tends
> to have a negative flavor in some sense, but it's a similar process.
>
> --
> Ville Koskinen
>
>
Received on Thu Sep 07 2006 - 21:47:38 UTC