
The Infamous SCSH Scheme Shell “Acknowledgements” (1994) - pcr910303
http://www.scsh.net/docu/html/man.html#node_index_start
======
chris_wot
He also once wrote:

"Enough of this last-minute, stay-of-execution, midnight-phone-call-from-the-
governor stuff. Throw the switch and let's fry this thing."

[https://srfi.schemers.org/srfi-1/mail-
archive/msg00077.html](https://srfi.schemers.org/srfi-1/mail-
archive/msg00077.html)

Also: “First, do you understand the difference between a dissertation and a
thesis? A thesis is an idea. A dissertation is a document that supports your
thesis. After you write your dissertation explaining why your thesis is a good
one, you have to stand up in front of a crowd and defend it -- the thesis
defence. It is best if you can capture your thesis in a single sentence. If
you can do this, make it sentence #1 of your dissertation, and repeat this
sentence, word for word, wherever you need to drive home the point of your
dissertation. This is a tremendous aid in focussing your work. A side benefit
is that it provides an unassailable defense to an entire class of attacks on
your work. For example, should someone attack your work by pointing out that
it does not scale, you simply reply,

 _You may be correct, but right or wrong, your point is irrelevant. My thesis
is that "crossbreeding gerbils with hamsters provides an order of magnitude
speedup over standard treadmill technology." I clearly demonstrate factors of
12-17 in my dissertation; I make no claims beyond an order of magnitude._

This is one of the benefits of focus.”

[http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/shivers/diss-
advice.html](http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/shivers/diss-advice.html)

~~~
ngcc_hk
This is another paragraph that works for me:

The point is: what are you trying to show? The point is: what is your point?
If you can get that straight in your head, and put it up front at the
beginning of your document, you will be able to proceed in a straight line.
You will know what things are essential, and what things are distractions or
detours. You will know when to stop writing: when you have demonstrated your
thesis. If your thesis committee makes unreasonable demands of you, you will
be able to tell them: "(a) My thesis, as stated, is a solid advancement of the
field, and (b) I have supported my thesis. This is all I need to do to
graduate; your requests are above and beyond this threshold. Cancel them and
give me my degree."

------
lukego
"Losing $35" by the same
author:[http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/shivers/rants/msoft.html](http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/shivers/rants/msoft.html)

~~~
soegaard
A classic.

~~~
lukego
Autoweapons too:
[http://www.ccs.neu.edu/~shivers/autoweapons.html](http://www.ccs.neu.edu/~shivers/autoweapons.html).

"He just couldn't get it through his head that I didn't want to hear about
Interlisp, and I damn sure didn't want to hear about 9-fucking-millimeter
automatics; we were a Zetalisp/.223 project. I finally gave up on him; that
was the first time I'd ever personally encountered the east coast/west coast
split in Lisp style and weapons choice."

~~~
blast
It reads exactly like an Onion article!

 _I am very fond of Berkeley. I think that while LA represents the dark,
twisted climb-the-water-tower-and-start-shooting-until-the-Marines-settle-it
side of California weirdness, Berkeley represents the very best of the pure,
innocent-killer side of it all._

------
james_s_tayler
> A 10 oz. Jack 'n Zac helps me get through the meetings without one of my
> students winding up with his severed head in a bowling-ball bag.

This is very colorful. He should have written thriller novels. Shame he wasted
his life doing "something with computers".

------
drfuchs
The reference to “Tops-20 JSYS manuals” is analogous to “Linux syscall wiki”.
“JSYS” is the opcode for “Jump into the operating SYStem” on Digital
Equipment’s 36-bit mainframes.

~~~
mhd
Can you get hardcover Print-outs of the Linux man pages, syscalls or other
sections? Huge printed manual sections on shelves appears to be a thing of the
past...

~~~
leoc
I haven't seen anyone selling them commercially. But if you could find high-
quality lever-arch binders and the right kind of blank paper you could
presumably make your own Linux version of the Big Grey Wall
[http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/b/BigGrayWall.html](http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/b/BigGrayWall.html)
. I assume that the core APIs change slowly enough nowadays that printing new
pages often enough to keep the wall up to date would not be infeasible. One
possible problem: IDK if all the snags involved in converting man page troff
into other formats are fully ironed out, even now. [http://man7.org/linux/man-
pages/man1/gropdf.1.html](http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/gropdf.1.html)
Probably the bigger reason not to is that the arrival of cheap tablets and
laptops, multi-monitor and/or ultrawide-monitor desktop setups and AR/VR is
eroding the remaining usefulness of such hardcopy docs. It still might be a
marginally-useful fashion statement for a whole office of programmers who
build directly on the Linux APIs fairly regularly.

Probably the nearest thing that's available off the shelf (no pun intended) is
a hardcover copy of Kerrisk [http://man7.org/tlpi/](http://man7.org/tlpi/) ,
which actually happens to be on a slightly-higher-than-usual discount this
very weekend: [https://nostarch.com/tlpi](https://nostarch.com/tlpi) .

~~~
pasabagi
I have used eprinting services to bind APIs as a book before. It's nice -
definitely worth the money if you plan on using something a lot.

~~~
leoc
Interesting. Which services did you use, and were you happy with the service
and prices? Did you find anyone who will print pages punched for ring-binding?

~~~
pasabagi
I used lulu - and I just printed the html documentation (it was for Allegro 5)
as a novel-size book. The price was fine. Other than that, it wasn't
significantly more difficult than ordering any other book - so I have no real
feeling for the service. They have a sort of web design app which was
predictably terrible, but it didn't really bother me because I didn't want
anything on the cover.

------
arkanciscan
Ah the '90s, when talking about how much you hate the world and would like to
do violence to it was cool, instead of a way to get banned from social media.

~~~
weinzierl
It got you banned from publishers except when you had a ton of reputation
already, so no much changed really...

------
peignoir
C.f.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2382531](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2382531)

~~~
dang
Originally posted by pg in 2007:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=76462](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=76462)

------
skibz
What's the story behind this?

~~~
gte525u
I had Olin as a professor while he was still at Georgia Tech.

Below is roughly as I recall from him telling the story. Olin has a colorful
sense of humor (see his usenet posts).

The anti-acknowledgements page was originally intended for his doctoral
thesis. It was going to contain everyone who discouraged or otherwise hindered
his efforts to degree (e.g. parents, girlfriend). His advisor talked him out
of it.

Later when he was at the one of MIT's lab he puts in the SCSH manual. The
manual gets printed and distributed. He doesn't hear anything. Later he gets
called into the head of the lab's office. Olin comes in and sits down. The
director takes out the manual and opens it to the acknowledgements section.
The first question is "Who has been stealing your work?", the second one is
"do you need to go into rehab?". Olin tells him it's a joke. It ended up being
a career limiting move for him.

~~~
shadowgovt
Yeah, go figure. I'm glad it seems he was able to roll with it and go on being
his awesome self, but there's a solid cautionary tale here: assume someone
with power over you is going to find and take offense to your snark and it
will hinder your forward momentum.

... that's the phrasing for sociopaths. For everyone else, you can summarize
it as "Don't be an asshole."

~~~
aidenn0
I have made some similar career limiting moves in the past, and I regret none
of them. The single thing I am most grateful for is being privileged to be in
a situation where I don't have to dial down the snark to survive. I've known
people for whom it would have been a "roof over your head" limiting move, and
that sucks.

I do try to keep the snark to a minimum on hn though, because I firmly believe
that I should only be an asshole to someone if I'm also granting them the
opportunity to punch me in the face.

My apologies for the few times I've not done so.

------
dang
As long as we're linking to other pieces he wrote, "The History of T" is
fascinating. (Mostly not funny.)

[http://www.paulgraham.com/thist.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/thist.html)

~~~
gte525u
He also wrote a chapter in the unix haters handbook.

------
teddyh
More by Olin Shivers, and others:

[https://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/shivers/autoweapons.html](https://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/shivers/autoweapons.html)

------
daef
Is this the same Olin Shivers as [0]?

[0] [https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/95333577/olin-
shivers](https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/95333577/olin-shivers)

~~~
gte525u
No - I believe he's at Northeastern University. It's humor - don't take it as
anything but that.

