Hotel Genius

What is or is not implemented in the kernel represents both a great responsibility
and a great power.  It is a soap-box platform on 'the way things should be done.'
Even so, if 'the way' is too radical, no one will follow it.  Every important
decision was weighed carefully.  Throughout, simplicity has been substituted for
efficiency.  Complex algorithms are used only if their complexity can be
localized.
- Ken Thompson; UNIX Implementation; The Bell System Technical Journal; July -
August 1978.


That brings me to Dennis Ritchie.  Our collaboration has been a thing of beauty.
In the ten years that we have worked together, I can recall only one case of
miscoordination of work.  On that occasion, I discovered that we both had written
the same 20-line assembly language program.  I compared the sources and was
astounded to find that they matched character-for-character.  The result of our
work together has been far greater than the work that we each contributed.
- Ken Thompson, Reflections on Trusting Trust, 1994.