The Night Watch (2013) [pdf]
35 comments
·March 12, 2025wffurr
His latest project is a heavy metal tribute album to himself by himself, made on sabbatical: https://mickens.seas.harvard.edu/wisdom-james-mickens
titanomachy
I’m inspired by this on so many levels. What a renaissance man.
> I warn you! This music is not for the faint of heart. Despite my lack of sound mixing experience, vocal training, or general common sense, I have created a poignant distillation of the human condition.
maxwelljoslyn
Man, when I thought I couldn't like this dude any more for his writing... What a fabulous drongo.
npodbielski
Nice! This is so cool even it sounds so bad! :D Would love to have a beer with this guy.
halifaxbeard
At the beginning of my career, I merely found it funny.
Now I find it relatable.
(don't install a signal handler in Python for SIGSEGV, especially if it's being triggered by C you're calling)
mifydev
Years go by, but I always find myself getting back to this article, it's just the true essence of systems programming.
bigstrat2003
In 2020, my pandemic hobby project was learning to write a kernel in Rust (instead of sourdough like everyone else). Around that time, I read this essay for the first time. It was one of the funniest things I had ever read, because it hit me at the right time in my life to appreciate how true it was. An absolute gem.
twp
This is, without doubt, the greatest sequence of words on programming ever committed to magnetic storage.
dang
Related. Others?
The Night Watch [pdf] (2013) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42440496 - Dec 2024 (28 comments)
The Night Watch (2013) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41219779 - Aug 2024 (1 comment)
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The Night Watch (2013) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16188538 - Jan 2018 (1 comment)
The Night Watch (2013) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13954077 - March 2017 (33 comments)
The Night Watch [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12490689 - Sept 2016 (2 comments)
The Night Watch (2013) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9671020 - June 2015 (21 comments)
The Night Watch - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6741804 - Nov 2013 (3 comments)
The Night Watch - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6735980 - Nov 2013 (3 comments)
mifydev
Oh, I didn’t know it was posted as recently as December, I just stumbled upon this again and assumed maybe not a lot of people have seen this recently
bigiain
He's _such_ a great writer/speaker. It's totally worth reposting him every 3 month.
I think this is my favourite piece of his, "This world of ours":
dcminter
I thinkbhe's a better writer than speaker, but I suspect if I'd seen him speak first I'd have it the other way around.
I love all his Usenix articles and they always cheer me up if I'm having a grumpy day at work.
bigfishrunning
This is the first time i've seen it, so you got one! thanks!
reportgunner
From the headline I thought this was going to be about night watch the book[0] (I have only seen the movies)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Watch_(Lukyanenko_novel)
jonathanlydall
I don't recall much about the movie, except that I enjoyed it at the time, but I was wondering if the title had a relationship to a different book[0].
Applejinx
And I was wondering about the painting[0] that inspired the King Crimson song…
mdiesel
And I was wondering if it was in reference to the Night's Watch of Westeros, who fittingly take a vow of celibacy and dedicate their lives to dealing with problems the Southern quiche-eaters don't understand or even believe exist.
null
xena
Honestly I hope to be able to write something like this at some point in my career. This is the kind of satire that comes from deep expertise, passion, and desire for the future generations to not repeat the mistakes you have made. This is one of the best articles of all time.
NotYourLawyer
Mickens always cracks me up. His writing style is a little overdone though.
itronitron
Yeah, I'm surprised and relieved that they haven't set off to write their own OS.
dharmab
I think that's kind of what he did at MSFT, but now he's a tenured professor at Harvard.
bitbasher
His talk at Monitorama was great-- one of the most entertaining talks around!
"if you find yourself drinking a martini and writing programs in garbage-collected, object-oriented Esperanto, be aware that the only reason that the Esperanto runtime works is because there are systems people who have exchanged any hope of losing their virginity for the exciting opportunity to think about hex numbers and their relationships with the operating system, the hardware, and ancient blood rituals that Bjarne Stroustrup performed at Stonehenge"
So true, so funny.
Also, this article subtly conveys the experience of being a working class immigrant at a top academic institution (something that I relate hard to)