Back
when I was a wee young lad, fresh from college, I thought I knew everything
there was to know.
One of
my best memories happened very early on, back when I was working on DOS 4. We
ran into some kind of problem... I was looking into the bug with Gordon Letwin,
the architect for DOS 4. I looked at the code and commented "Maybe this is
what was happening? But if that were the case, it'd take a one in a million
chance for it to happen".
Gordon's
response was simple, "In our business, one in a million is next
Tuesday".
He then
went on to comment that at the speeds which modern computers operate (4.77 MHz
remember), things happened so quickly that something with a one in a million
chance of occurrence is likely to happen in the next day or so.
I'm not
sure I've ever received better advice in my career.
It has
also stood the test of time – no matter how small the chance of something
happening, with modern computers and modern operating systems, essentially
every possible race condition or deadlock will be found within a reasonable
period of time.
So
nowadays, whenever anyone comments on how unlikely it is for some event to
occur, my answer is simply: "One in a million is next Tuesday".
~ Larry Osterman
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"If nature has taught us anything it is that the impossible is probable.”
~ Ilyas Kassam
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