From owner-freebsd-hackers Fri Jun 4 9: 7: 9 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org Received: from alpo.whistle.com (alpo.whistle.com [207.76.204.38]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 333CD154AC for ; Fri, 4 Jun 1999 09:07:06 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from ambrisko@whistle.com) Received: from whistle.com (crab.whistle.com [207.76.205.112]) by alpo.whistle.com (8.9.1a/8.9.1) with ESMTP id JAA34955 for ; Fri, 4 Jun 1999 09:07:06 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from ambrisko@localhost) by whistle.com (8.9.1/8.9.1) id JAA11017 for freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG; Fri, 4 Jun 1999 09:06:23 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from ambrisko) From: Doug Ambrisko Message-Id: <199906041606.JAA11017@whistle.com> Subject: Re: 3.2-stable, panic #12 In-Reply-To: <199906041508.JAA27044@mt.sri.com> from Nate Williams at "Jun 4, 99 09:08:03 am" To: freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1999 09:06:22 -0700 (PDT) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL29 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG Nate Williams writes: | I know of *NO* programmer who does not delight in completely ripping out | and replacing existing code with code that he has written from scratch. | It's great fun, and it allows the person to feel better about the | system, themselves, and make sure that they can debug the existing code | better. I do it all the time. But, I know for a fact that it's rarely I guess you don't really know me. I've always taken great pleasure in fixing other peoples code. That is, examine their code and style, figure out their concepts and then guess at mistakes in their concept. Code is just an implementation of concepts with a style. This is how I developed my bag of tricks and learnt from others. I also like code without coments, it forces me to understand the actual written code and derive the concept from it vs. assuming the concept that has been described. Comments for me are to describe "black magic" ie. bizare side-effect/hardware bugs. A fun challenge was porting clisp to the Alpha, it had German variable and comments and did some really made some interesting assumptions on pointers. The only thing in English was the 'C' language. It was a lot of fun and I learnt a lot. Now the challenge is anticipate errors by looking at the least amount of code by picking up the style and concepts. Sure I make mistakes but that's how I get better and learn. Okay, I'll admit I'm a bit strange atleast my wife agress with that, now my daughter we'll see. Doug (hates looking at a blank editor saying where to start) A. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message