
The Night Watch (2013) [pdf] - sconxu
http://scholar.harvard.edu/files/mickens/files/thenightwatch.pdf
======
unoti
There will always be someone at a lower level than you. As a systems
programmer he pokes fun at UX people. It is indeed hilarious. But technology
and science is all about collaboration and building on other people's work.
Remember that a generation ago nobody could be expected to use a program
successfully without reading documentation first, and this even included most
games. The proliferation of computers into the hands of everybody at your
local bus stop is as much because of the work of the HCI people as the systems
people.

A chip designer could write a similar rant about how systems programmers live
a life of luxury sipping champagne with their pinkies held up. YOU USED AN
ASSEMBLER? I SHOULD BE SO LUCKY! Or a chip designer could be mocked by someone
else because he uses verilog.

Or the UX researcher could scoff at the systems programmer, because at least
CPU's are rational and predictable, while people are at varying levels of
intelligence and have different kinds of cultural biases.

~~~
AdeptusAquinas
Its intended as humour, not a rant. Maybe read some of his other stuff, for
context.

------
sargun
Mickens has some great material. He gave a talk at Monitorama a few years ago
that's one of my favourites:
[https://vimeo.com/95066828](https://vimeo.com/95066828)

The article paints the plight of systems programmers in a hilarious way. I
think programmer humour is rarely this well written, although a recent piece
comes to mind by aphyr: [https://aphyr.com/posts/340-acing-the-technical-
interview](https://aphyr.com/posts/340-acing-the-technical-interview)

~~~
dmoy
Mickens is my favorite. His piece about theoretical vs practical security in
tech is awesome.

~~~
twosheep
Link?

~~~
hyperion2010
[https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1401_08-12_mickens.pdf](https://www.usenix.org/system/files/1401_08-12_mickens.pdf)

------
Animats
Having done that sort of work early in my career, I think that's a bit much.

My first job in California started out with two 6-foot stacks of octal dumps
of operating system crashes, for a mainframe OS that was running 1-2 hours
between crashes. I worked through those slowly, with colored pencils and
highlighting markers, figuring out what had gone wrong, then putting a fix
into the OS, in assembler. Gradually the stacks got shorter and the time
between crashes increased. When I left that job, we were going a month between
crashes.

Then I changed jobs to work on operating system design and proof of
correctness.

This is why I'm so negative on unsafe code in Rust. Memory safety is
essential. There are programmers who think they are so good that they don't
need bounds checking. They are wrong. The most recent CERT advisory of a
security hole for a buffer overflow was 8 days
ago.[[http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/214283](http://www.kb.cert.org/vuls/id/214283)]

------
M_Grey
_I’m glad that people are working on new kinds of bouncing icons because they
believe that humanity has solved cancer and homelessness and now lives in a
consequence-free world of immersive sprites. That’s exciting, and I wish that
I could join those people in the 27th century. But I live here, and I live
now..._

How often I feel like this describes almost every human endeavor. "Oh, your
toaster can phone home? Marvelous..."

------
mrkgnao

        Syntax error: unmatched thing in thing from std::nonstd::__map<_Cyrillic, _$$$dollars>const basic_string<epic_mystery,mongoose_traits<char>,__default_alloc_<casual_Fridays = maybe>>

------
gbrown_
His pieces in Login are great. There's links to the rest of them and his
others works at [http://mickens.seas.harvard.edu/wisdom-james-
mickens](http://mickens.seas.harvard.edu/wisdom-james-mickens)

------
buildbot
Mickens usenix articles helped me get through several all nighters in
undergrad. He has the perfect balance of technical material and humor in my
opinion.

------
topload
MySQL: You want answers?

htop: I think I'm entitled.

MySQL: You want answers?

htop: I want the truth!

MySQL: You can't handle the truth! Son, we live in a world that has data, and
those data have to be queried by processes that takes load. Who's gonna do it?
You? You, Lieutenant htop?

I have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom. You weep for 4
cores and you curse the Queries. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of
not knowing what I know: that the core's load, while tragic, probably runned
queries.

And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, runs queries.
You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at
parties, you want me on that processor, you need me on that processor.

We use words like load average, slow running queries, query execution plan. We
use these words as the backbone of a life spent developing db applications.
You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to
explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very
database power that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I
provide it!

I would rather you just said, "Thank you," and went on your way. Otherwise, I
suggest you pick up a server and run a query. Either way, I don't give a damn
what you think you are entitled to!:

htop: Did you order the Code SELECT * ?

MySQL: (quietly) I did the job I was sent to do--

htop: Did you order the Code SELECT * ?

MySQL: (shouting) You're goddamn right I did.

[stunned silence] htop: Please the court, I suggest the members be dismissed,
so that we can move to an immediate article 'Use Redis' session. The witness
has rights.

~~~
sumanthvepa
Loved it! Absoolutely hilarious!

~~~
topload
Thanks! For those who didn't get the joke, I want to point you to this moment
of decision in A Few Good Men.

(spoiler alert) -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FnO3igOkOk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FnO3igOkOk)

------
Buge
> I mean, when a machine learning algorithm mistakenly identifies a cat as an
> elephant, this is actually hilarious.

But when the ML algorithm mistakenly identifies a black person as a gorilla,
it's a disaster.

[https://fusion.net/story/159736/google-photos-identified-
bla...](https://fusion.net/story/159736/google-photos-identified-black-people-
as-gorillas-but-racist-software-isnt-new/)

~~~
jfoutz
Someday, people will live in a world where both errors are funny for the same
reason. Right now we've got a lot of cultural baggage we unintentionally
picked up over the years. I'm glad most people are aware enough to see it as a
disaster, and maybe they're able make some adjustments to their values, slowly
influencing our collective cultural values. I doubt i'll ever see it, but
hopefully 10 generations down the road, it'll be funny for everyone.

I wish there was a way to make things like that go faster, but it seems like
most people have a hard time changing at that level. On the upside, my parents
are less racist than my grandparents. I like to think i'm less racist than my
parents. The only effective method for that kind of change seems to be the
people holding old values just dying off.

~~~
sangnoir
> Right now we've got a lot of cultural baggage we unintentionally picked up
> over the years.

"Unintentionally"? That's an optimistic take on history (recent and non-
recent), considering the institutionalized/codified nature of the said
"baggage".

~~~
jfoutz
Individual intention. I didn't build those institutions or codes. Yet those
institutions and codes influenced my development, and continue to manipulate
me.

History is history. It's how we got here and what built the culture we deal
with today. For example, 250 years ago those institutions came to the
conclusion the 3/5ths compromise was a good idea. 150 years ago they reversed
their opinion. We're still dealing with a zillion consequences of those
decisions.

No one alive today had any influence over any of that. We're told this is how
the world was, this is how the world is. Some people recognize, no, the world
doesn't have to be this way and make changes. But i think that's rare. Most
people just sort of accept what they're told and go on with their lives.

------
convolvatron
actually. you can* lay a copy of steele's lambda papers on top of an intel
processor and the blinding light of godhood will shine forth

~~~
imglorp
*symbolics

------
xg15
I was impressed until about this:

 _As a systems hacker, you must be prepared to do savage things, unspeakable
things, to kill runaway threads with your bare hands, to write directly to
network ports using telnet and an old copy of an RFC that you found in the
Vatican._

So if I can use netcat and ethereal, I'm ready for the zombie apocalypse? I
can sleep better then. :-P

~~~
fulafel
Netcat/telnet doesn't write the payloads for you.

------
horsecaptin
From now on I'm calling my UI/UX guy ZeusHammer

------
disputatious
Good to have candid information online.

------
vmarsy
Title should have a (2013) tag.

Some previous discussion :
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9671020](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9671020)

