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   Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: (jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net)'s status on Saturday, 19-Nov-2022 19:42:31 JST Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

   Had to verify. And yes. Kernighan and Ritchie really did this. TIL :)

   • Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: and clacke repeated this.
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     Mike Taylor 🦕 (mike@sauropods.win)'s status on Sunday, 20-Apr-2025 14:11:16 JST Mike Taylor 🦕

     in reply to

     @jwildeboer There's always a dry humour just beneath the surface in Kernighan's book. In Kernighan & Pike's "The UNIX Programming Environment", one set of exercises has you add a sequence of a features to the "cal" program, then finishes with the question: When should you have stopped adding features to `cal'?

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: and clacke like this.
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     Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange: (jwildeboer@social.wildeboer.net)'s status on Sunday, 20-Apr-2025 14:12:08 JST Jan Wildeboer 😷:krulorange:

     in reply to

     And no, Stroustroup did NOT do this in the C++ book and also no, Knuth didn’t do this in AOCP :)

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: likes this.
     clacke repeated this.
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     Jeroen Wiert Pluimers (wiert@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 20-Apr-2025 14:12:32 JST Jeroen Wiert Pluimers

     in reply to

     @jwildeboer I finally had some time to check out more on the history of these book index puns (having gained back energy after the refurbishing and move last winter exhausted me a bit too much):

     Donald Knuth did put a recursion joke in The Art of Computer Programming - Volume 1: Fundamental Algorithms.

     - Index and Glossary page 631: "Circular Definition"
     - Index and Glossary page 633: "Definition, Circular"

     1/

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     Tim Hergert (cjust@infosec.exchange)'s status on Sunday, 20-Apr-2025 15:06:03 JST Tim Hergert

     in reply to

     @jwildeboer I'm sure that there more than a few good pointers in there as well

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     Steve Rumsby (steverumsby@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 20-Apr-2025 15:06:09 JST Steve Rumsby

     in reply to

     @jwildeboer

     Interestingly, not in the original edition, though!

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     Peter Heppner (geistesriesen@nrw.social)'s status on Sunday, 20-Apr-2025 15:06:36 JST Peter Heppner

     in reply to

     @jwildeboer
     Try Larry Wall's Perl Book, same sense of humor. The good ole days...

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     Jeroen Wiert Pluimers (wiert@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 20-Apr-2025 15:06:42 JST Jeroen Wiert Pluimers

     in reply to

     @jwildeboer Turbo Pascal did a similar thing (:

     https://wiert.me/2016/11/23/recursion/

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     Marty Vance (caraesnaur@dice.camp)'s status on Sunday, 20-Apr-2025 15:06:51 JST Marty Vance

     in reply to

     @jwildeboer Those two deserve almost all of the credit & accolades that Steve Jobs gets.

     I want to see 3 movies made about Dennis Ritchie, but it'll never happen.

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     crusom :blob_anar_raccoon: (crusom@sunbeam.city)'s status on Sunday, 20-Apr-2025 15:07:01 JST crusom :blob_anar_raccoon:

     in reply to

     @jwildeboer meeh, doesnt work in Polish translation :/

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     Jean-Luc CHEVILLARD (jlc1956@nerdculture.de)'s status on Sunday, 20-Apr-2025 15:07:12 JST Jean-Luc CHEVILLARD

     in reply to

     @jwildeboer
     I have a copy of the 1978 (first) edition (ISBN 0-13-110163-3). That index item is on page 226. It contains ONLY five page references: 3, 84, 131, 132, 186.
     That seems to indicate they thought of making that joke only later. ;-)

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     Noam writes (noam@libranet.de)'s status on Sunday, 20-Apr-2025 15:07:23 JST Noam writes

     in reply to
     @jwildeboer My father wrote a computer science book back in the 1970s. In the index, there's an entry:
     Computers, p. 1-245.
     clacke likes this.
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     Victor Osório (vepo@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 20-Apr-2025 15:07:31 JST Victor Osório

     in reply to

     @jwildeboer the Brazilian Portuguese version from 20 years ago removed it. ☹️

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     Jim Kile (jimkile@fosstodon.org)'s status on Sunday, 20-Apr-2025 15:07:33 JST Jim Kile

     in reply to

     @jwildeboer I have had this book since I was in college (I graduated in 1989) and had no idea. I had to look to satisfy my curiosity. Sure enough, it was there.

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     Alan Francis (acf@masto.alancfrancis.com)'s status on Sunday, 20-Apr-2025 15:07:44 JST Alan Francis

     in reply to

     @jwildeboer @phasorburn@toot.phasorburn.com interestingly not in the first edition :) just added for the ANSI version.

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     deadprogram (deadprogram@social.tinygo.org)'s status on Sunday, 20-Apr-2025 15:07:58 JST deadprogram

     in reply to

     • Charlie Stross

     @jwildeboer @cstross interesting, that must have been added in the second edition

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     WGAvanDijk (wgavandijk@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 20-Apr-2025 15:08:07 JST WGAvanDijk

     in reply to

     @jwildeboer
     Who copied it from whom? 🙂
     Andrew Koenig wrote the book "C Traps and Pitfalls" and did the same recursive page number mentioning in the index. His book is from 1988/1989, and the second edition by Kernighan & Ritchis is from those years too.

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     Giacomo (shut5967@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 20-Apr-2025 15:08:10 JST Giacomo

     in reply to

     @jwildeboer
     Unfortunately this went lost in translation in my Italian version of the book, what a shame... 😔

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     Howard Chu @ Symas (hyc@mastodon.social)'s status on Thursday, 24-Apr-2025 15:03:23 JST Howard Chu @ Symas

     in reply to

     • Mike Taylor 🦕

     @mike @jwildeboer people scoff when I still recommend this book. But IMO it's still essential reading, to grok the proper mindset. Much like reading about Forth, most people need to be shown the elegance and efficiency that are part of good designs. They obviously have no clue otherwise, looking at the bloated crap they produce.

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     Ludovic Archivist Lagouardette (archivist@social.linux.pizza)'s status on Thursday, 24-Apr-2025 15:03:23 JST Ludovic Archivist Lagouardette

     in reply to

     • Howard Chu @ Symas
     • Mike Taylor 🦕

     @hyc @mike @jwildeboer

     Forth is just so good, best language to implement for quick and dirty scripting, and once you made an interpreter for it you have a debuggable VM for any other language you could implement

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