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0 pointswickedchicken14y ago0 comments

"TCP/IP won because we focused on writing the software, not the documentation" - Vint Cerf [1]

Hackers write code. If you write code and documentation, you're an engineer, good programmer, etc.

Think about what you are you saying when you're "hacking on some code" -- you are intentionally writing code that is bad, but cleverly bad enough to get the job done. "Thoroughly documented hacks" are about as nonsensical as F. Scott Fitzgerald exquisitely writing about how great it feels to take a piss.

[1] While I really want to get this confirmed from the man himself, this is unfortunately sourced from a twitter post and not entirely verifiable at the moment: http://twitter.com/#!/pcalcado/statuses/74071761897005056

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drdaeman14y ago

I believe he meant that IP won over, say, X.25 because OSI stack was overcomplicated. In a same way SMTP (67-page RFC) won over X.400 (a huge book).

Hackers think, write code and then they may consider to document something about it. This is in contrast to engineers, who think, document then implement things.

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