Date: Thu, 3 Jun 1999 18:31:36 -0700 (PDT) From: Matthew Dillon <dillon@apollo.backplane.com> To: Date:Thu@apollo.backplane.com, 3@FreeBSD.ORG, Jun@FreeBSD.ORG, 1999@FreeBSD.ORG, 20:07:23.-0500@apollo.backplane.com (EST) Cc: nate@mt.sri.com (Nate Williams), freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Matt's Commit status (was Re: 3.2-stable, panic #12) Message-ID: <199906040131.SAA01566@apollo.backplane.com> References: <199906040107.UAA24486@dyson.iquest.net.>
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:The learning curve would have been much less painful if questions
:would have been asked and/or the answers weren't ignored. (There were
:cases of my answers and suggestions not even being challenged, but
:were rejected out of hand.) After a while, the *only* way to be
:heard was to become extremely assertive. Being assertive the way
:that I had to be was very very painful for me, but regressions
:kept on creeping in. The *only* way to throttle the anti-progress
:was to raise a big stink.
I don't want to be a pest, because this really shouldn't be on an
open forum. But John: I would ask you questions and the answers I
would get would be in the form: "Nobody understands that
code but me, don't touch what you don't understand", or "The algorithm
is obvious from the code". This in regards to non-compartmentalized
algorithms strewn across half a dozen source files which are almost
universally lacking in comments of any substance.
It would take several emails back and forth before you would grudgingly
dig up your old code and review it yourself. Because you were often not
absolutely sure about your own description, you tended to give me general
answers lacking in detail first, requiring me to prod you for further
detail.
That VM code was very fragile. It mostly worked, but it was very fragile.
It still IS fragile. I spent a quarter of my time simply commenting
the existing code. I've had to do the same thing with the NFS and buffer
cache code, VM object code, VM map code. The VFS code still needs a huge
amount of commenting. The struct buf and device interaction with the
struct buf still needs an enormous amount of commenting. blkno, lblkno,
pblkno.... hack upon hack upon hack. All uncommented and inadequately
commented.
-Matt
Matthew Dillon
<dillon@backplane.com>
:dyson@iquest.net | it makes one look stupid
:jdyson@nc.com | and it irritates the pig.
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