From: Kyle Moffett <mrmacman_g4@mac.com>
To: Jan Engelhardt <jengelh@linux01.gwdg.de>
Cc: "Ahmed S. Darwish" <darwish.07@gmail.com>,
Cong WANG <xiyou.wangcong@gmail.com>,
Russ Meyerriecks <datachomper@gmail.com>,
linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
Andrew Morton <akpm@linux-foundation.org>
Subject: Re: Student Project Ideas
Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2007 20:25:12 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <EE2D5D85-8F52-46B2-83A3-918ED961FDB1@mac.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.61.0703300206480.31834@yvahk01.tjqt.qr>
On Mar 29, 2007, at 20:09:11, Jan Engelhardt wrote:
> On Mar 29 2007 18:54, Kyle Moffett wrote:
>>
>> One thing that I think is fairly non-obvious to newcomers is that
>> Linux kernel development is not done at all the way they teach you
>> in your Large Scale Software Engineering classes. Many of those
>> classes talk much about careful design (whether top-down, bottom-
>> up, outside-in, waterfall, spiral, $BUZZWORD_OF_THE_DAY) and
>> detailed unit-testing, whereas Linux kernel development isn't
>> really "designed" at all.
>
> Well, linux kernel is "extreme programming" - hack away until it
> works, care about a design shape and stable API later.
I somewhat disagree. Look at the amount of _design_ which is going
into the linux-virtualization stuff, the replacement SLAB subsystems
(SLOB/SLUB), or the current queued-spinlock thread. Admittedly with
Linux 90% of the design process is rewriting the code a thousand
times based on comments before it goes into mainline, but that's
design nonetheless. It's just evolved-design-by-committee, a very
knowledgeable committee made of the people who are interested in and
understand what's going on well enough to give useful input and with
enough sense of technical value to veto anything with significant
architectural problems.
Cheers,
Kyle Moffett
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2007-03-30 0:25 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 13+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
2007-03-29 10:04 Student Project Ideas Russ Meyerriecks
2007-03-29 10:15 ` Helge Hafting
2007-03-29 10:32 ` Cong WANG
2007-03-29 20:59 ` Ahmed S. Darwish
2007-03-29 22:54 ` Kyle Moffett
2007-03-30 0:09 ` Jan Engelhardt
2007-03-30 0:25 ` Kyle Moffett [this message]
2007-03-29 16:35 ` Stefan Richter
2007-03-29 20:44 ` Ahmed S. Darwish
2007-03-30 5:17 ` Lee Revell
2007-03-30 15:34 ` Pavel Machek
2007-03-30 16:15 ` Gerb Stralko
2007-04-02 13:01 ` Pavel Machek
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