[Beowulf] Re: "hobbyists"

[Perry E. Metzger]

Lawrence Stewart <larry.stewart at sicortex.com> writes:
> There are many positive things to say about the Linux kernel, but
> "good code" is not one of them.

I tend to agree. The quality levels tend to be very mixed.

> Well that is too broad an indictment -  There is good code in there,
> but the level varies widely.
> Have you <<looked>> at the TTY drivers? Have you counted the number of
> "<< 9" s in the block code?
> Tried to figure out which includes are actually active?  Tried to
> figure out which of the 17 ways to do
> something is the "approved" one?

There are worse examples, sadly. :(

> I have one of the copies of the "Lions" book - the annoted sources
> for V6. That is good code.  Written by one or a very few exceptional
> programmers, not an agglomeration of a zillion patches.

Unfortunately, also in a pretty old C dialect, and written for an age
where catching edge conditions wasn't worth it because you had to run
in 64k and had no attackers to deal with. :(

That said, the Lions book is in a prominent place on my shelf.

There's a great book out there called "Code Reading"
by Diomidis Spinellis that I'd recommend ahead of just jumping in to
the Linux kernel.

-- 
Perry E. Metzger		perry at piermont.com