Why HN was slow and how Rtm fixed it

I find it disturbing to see people asking "Who is Rtm?" "Who is filo?"

I understand if you are in tech you might not know figures in history or literature... but these guys?

Every time you login to a UNIX/Linux system you use the passwd file and related setup - authored at least in part by Rtm's father.

http://www.manpages.info/freebsd/passwd.1.html

Rtm has done lots in his own right as the wikipdia pages show.

But seriously - if you don't know who these people are you really should.

Read this: http://www.princeton.edu/~hos/Mahoney/unixhistory

and maybe ESR's writings and that online anthology of the early Apple days and old issues of 2600, etc, etc

I am sorry - but it is really irritating to me that someone would be on this site and really not be aware of the deeper history and culture. It is not that deep - 1950s to present (to cover Lisp).

As Jay-Z (whom you probably know) says - "Go read a book you illiterate son of a bitch and step up your vocab ..."

You're making little sense. So "go learn" but "don't ask?"

It's really nothing to get excited about. There are so many important programmers in the world that noone will remember them all. Not everyone works in the area where those people will mean anything more than a credit line in some tool they use... and that's fine.

I work with VoIP daily and could name lots of people who you "really should" know - you're using a phone all the time after all. Or people who create amazing stuff right now. But no... actually I don't expect that. Everyone has their own area of interest. I appreciate that someone wrote `cat` or one hundreds of other nice utilities, but I'm not going to read their history unless I've got a lot of free time and want to do that.

This has to be one of the most unnecessary comments I have seen recently on HN.

Civility people. What happened to that?

Btw, I down vote me if you like, but it's true. It's easy for us to get caught up in our own brilliance that we talk down to others that don't know as much in a particular subject as we do.

Ironically, it shows more about you, than it does them.

You write for a major magazine on the subject. Yes - I would hope you know more about the history of this topic than I do.

Civility? Go to a sports blog - put on you Bio that you are a journalist for sports illustrated and then in the commentary of an article on American football ask the question "who is Joe Namath?" Then judge my commentary by its relative civility. Do you not read about the authors of books you read - music you listen to? Why then wouldn't you read up on the people whose software you use. I am sorry - it is ignorance and on HN that deserves to be called out.

Who is ESR? ;)