Henry Spencer

Henry Spencer
Henry Spenceris a Canadian computer programmer and space enthusiast. He wrote "regex", a widely used software library for regular expressions, and co-wrote C News, a Usenet server program. He also wrote The Ten Commandments for C Programmers. He is coauthor, with David Lawrence, of the book Managing Usenet. While working at the University of Toronto he ran the first active Usenet site outside the U.S., starting in 1981. His records from that period were eventually acquired by Google to provide...
NationalityCanadian
ProfessionScientist
CountryCanada
The communications delays between Earth and Mars can be half an hour or more, so the people on the ground can't participate minute by minute in Mars surface activities.
To err is human, but to really screw things up requires a design committee of bureaucrats.
Belief is no substitute for arithmetic.
MS-DOS isn't dead, it just smells that way.
Politics /n/: from 'poly ticks', short for 'many small bloodsucking insects'.
Programming graphics in X is like finding the square root of PI using Roman numerals.
If you lie to the compiler, it will get its revenge.
Altruism is a fine motive, but if you want results, greed works much better.
If I must be ruled by larcenous bullies, I much prefer that they be located far away. Local bullies know far more about me and my doings than faraway bullies sitting in offices in Washington, and can oppress me far more effectively.
A bit of tolerance is worth a megabyte of flamming.
C++ is the best example of second-system effect since OS/360.
Those who do not understand Unix are condemned to reinvent it, poorly.
The key virtue of orbital assembly is that it eliminates the tight connection between the size of the expedition and the size of the rockets used to launch it.