

Programming   - prakash
http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com/2009/08/programming.html

======
jgrahamc
It's a pity that this has the top slot because it provides no technical
information about what optimizations he made and it doesn't have any benchmark
information.

It's just "Hey, look at me, I'm Linus and I optimized some C code to make it
fast". I would much rather see him give us some insight into optimization
strategies for different architectures. He appears to know about that, but not
share it.

Oddly, he was talking about how the Mozilla SHA1 code was faster than OpenSSL
back in 2005: [http://www.mail-
archive.com/git@vger.kernel.org/msg01138.htm...](http://www.mail-
archive.com/git@vger.kernel.org/msg01138.html)

~~~
pieter
Hmm? Just one click away is this:

[http://git.kernel.org/?p=git/git.git;a=commitdiff;h=66c9c6c0...](http://git.kernel.org/?p=git/git.git;a=commitdiff;h=66c9c6c0fbba0894ebce3da572f62eb05162e547)

Provides benchmarks and explanation, and code. What more do you want?

Edit. RE: OpenSSL/MozillaSHA speed: He was comparing PowerPC speeds at that
time, and is now obviously back on Intel.

------
known
Our mental abilities start to dwindle at 27
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7945569.stm>

------
KC8ZKF
So Linus wants to dump libcrypt in git by rolling his own to speed up the test
suite by a "couple of seconds?"

Good for Linus-- I guess.

~~~
old-gregg
He's not rolling out his own libcrypt. He's fixing a bug: i.e. getting rid of
the unnecessary dependency on a _huge_ library (OpenSSH) just because of a
hashing function. This is systems programming, not a brainless enterprise data
pumping: you get rid of unnecessary dependencies if you want to run on cell
phones and blade servers at the same time.

~~~
dkarl
If all he wanted was to dump a dependency, it would have been easier to cut-
and-paste a slightly slower implementation from another library. I think he's
saying he _enjoyed_ it. The benchmarks are just after-the-fact justification.

------
access_denied
> Did I mention that I seem to have some OCD issues?

As an advertising guy I love how L is basically saying: when submitting to
reddigg print "Linus Torvalds has problems with OCD".

~~~
biohacker42
As a programming guy I can tell you mild OCD is basically a requirement for
programmers.

~~~
access_denied
I meant my comment as a positive hint to things like this Linus did in the
past. Linus always was a good advertiser.

------
Pistos2
Horribly-chosen HN titles FTL? I'm not even going to click through.

~~~
Tuna-Fish
The site name next to the title tells more than the title, and yes, it was
worth the read.

Only because it was quite short, though.

