[throwaway_pdp09]

I think this Perlis comment is not really related to the subject, which is clearly a bit of fun and good on it for being so, but the bit about Perlis feeling not responsible for "successful error-free perfect use of these machines" badly puts my back up. I'd say over my career I've lost literally years to shitty software and its twin, shitty documentation.

To the extent that you are responsible for the errors in these you are very responsible, else you're wasting amounts of human capacity (and generating it's twin, unhappiness) proportional to the size of your user base, and that can be absolutely huge.

Or could be I'm taking his quote just a bit too seriously.

[willberman]

Ha! I would agree that you might be taking it a bit too seriously. I was trying to make the point that sometimes things that might seem purposeless are useful simply because they are fun, scratch an itch, and might lead to a new way of looking at something. That exploratory process might be worth it in certain projects even if it introduces more bugs accidentally. I should have elaborated more rather than just leaving a quote. After all, quotation in absence of analysis contributes very little novelty.

[perl4ever]

The quote says "we in computer science". I'm not sure I've been impacted by computer scientists in that way. Although, I don't think of any random person with a CS degree as being "in computer science".