Date: Tue, 9 Mar 1999 02:33:55 -0500 (EST) From: "John S. Dyson" <dyson@iquest.net> To: eivind@FreeBSD.ORG (Eivind Eklund) Cc: dyson@iquest.net, info@highwind.com, current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Killed Myself Message-ID: <199903090733.CAA32299@y.dyson.net> In-Reply-To: <19990309074902.T41771@bitbox.follo.net> from Eivind Eklund at "Mar 9, 99 07:49:02 am"
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Eivind Eklund said:
> On Mon, Mar 08, 1999 at 05:59:05PM -0500, John S. Dyson wrote:
> > Eivind Eklund said:
> > > If you do not know how FreeBSD works to a detailed enough level to NOT
> > > HAVE TO ASK THIS, then you should MAKE WORLD. You should NOT try to
> > > do incremental recompiles. That is reserved for those people that
> > > know exactly what they are doing.
> >
> > And those who know exactly what they are doing still get zapped.
>
> Of course - but we know not to ask :-)
>
I agree... This is a deal where people need to know the limits of their
experience. Of course, it is good when people try to push themselves.
When people delve deeper and deeper into the system, it seems that there
are more and more ways of burning oneself. Anything like new system calls,
changing kernel data structures and (even worse) on disk formats is more
or less tricky for anyone. With experience, ones is surprised less and less,
but still mistakes do happen :-(.
Is this clearly noted somewhere? I know that it is common knowledge, but
as new people use the system (and get adventureous) some of 'em will get
burnt with mistakes.
Back in the late '70's, I started investigating C as a programming language. It
took a week to get a "hello world" to compile and link. I was an island, without any
support from anyone. Such experiences do teach one to be somewhat tolerant.
My mistake: I came from a DEC programming world, and I wrote the program
like this:
Main()
{
Printf("Hello world\n");
}
My brain wasn't trained to be case sensitive (of course, it is now), but that
was a most irritating experience.
--
John | Never try to teach a pig to sing,
dyson@iquest.net | it makes one look stupid
jdyson@nc.com | and it irritates the pig.
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