Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2000 17:33:56 +0800 From: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> To: Chuck Robey <chuckr@picnic.mat.net> Cc: "William A. Maniatty" <maniatty@cs.albany.edu>, msmith@FreeBSD.ORG, FreeBSD-doc@FreeBSD.ORG, asmodai@wxs.nl, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, maniattb@cs.rpi.edu Subject: Re: Learning the FreeBSD Kernel Message-ID: <20000124173356.N2643@mojave.worldwide.lemis.com> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0001240222190.315-100000@picnic.mat.net>; from chuckr@picnic.mat.net on Mon, Jan 24, 2000 at 02:28:23AM -0500 References: <200001240716.CAA02016@richard.cs.albany.edu> <Pine.BSF.4.21.0001240222190.315-100000@picnic.mat.net>
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On Monday, 24 January 2000 at 2:28:23 -0500, Chuck Robey wrote:
> On Mon, 24 Jan 2000, William A. Maniatty wrote:
>
>> Both Chuck Robey and Mike Smith have some points, but that won't
>> stop me from giving my opinion :-). Mike is correct that experience is
>> key to being a solid systems software developer, who writes device drivers.
>> Now the next question is how can someone get experience? By developing
>> systems software (which by the way they should only do if they have
>> experience at it :-)).
>>
>> Traditionally there are two approaches:
>> 1) Have a friend available and bug them for help when you get stuck :-)
>> 2) Read the documentation.
>> 3) Read the code and lose a whole lot of productivity without certainty
>> of figuring it out on your own.
>> 4) Dismiss the whole problem as unmanageable and throw your
>> weight behind a more productive project.
>
> I know where Mike's coming from. Wait until the next guy posts on the
> list "I don't really know how to program, but please tell what 'C' is, and
> how to write a device driver". We had a pretty nasty flamewar over that
> maybe (I think) 9 months ago, and it still hurts folks, to be accused of
> conceit, when the guy was asking a grossly unanswerable question, and
> wouldn't believe it couldn't be boiled down to a 4 paragraph "device
> drivers for dummies" thing. Mike wants to avoid dealing with a horde of
> folks like that.
I don't think anybody's picking on Mike, but there are some obvious
points here:
1. This isn't an idiot asking inappropriate questions, it's a college
professor asking very appropriate questions.
2. Nobody's asking Mike to do anything.
I think that one of the problems Mike is showing (and it's not just
Mike, but somehow it seems to be his turn to be picked on right now
:-) is that it's painful enough to go through the learning experience
the first time, and you don't really want to go back and try again and
again. Unfortunately, this doesn't make it any less necessary. I was
hoping that Bill's student might help create better documentation as
well; if he succeeds in that, generations of FreeBSD driver
programmers will burn incense at his shrine.
Greg
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