Date: Wed, 30 Jun 1999 17:40:39 -0700 (PDT) From: Matthew Dillon <dillon@apollo.backplane.com> To: Nik Clayton <nik@nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk> Cc: Constantine Shkolny <stan@osgroup.com>, "hackers@FreeBSD.ORG" <hackers@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: Microsoft performance (was: All this and documentation too? (was: cvs commit: src/sys/isa sio.c)) Message-ID: <199907010040.RAA41893@apollo.backplane.com> References: <01BEBFCB.F95F6F00.stan@osgroup.com> <19990630210102.A72675@catkin.nothing-going-on.org>
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: [...]
:
: I guessed I freaked some people out when I declared that I wanted to
: work on the VM system, discussions in the first few months went with
: half of core talking to me like I didn't know jack when I do know at
: least jack, but had to come up to speed on FreeBSDisms in the code
: and the utter lack of documentation.
:
: [...]
:
:That quote is from part of a message on another topic (and one which is
:off-topic for -hackers).
:
:Matt's a very talented coder. But he still has to come up to speed on how
:things have been done on the FreeBSD project, and how we've diverged from
:published documentation (such as "The Design and Implementation") before
:he can do useful work.
I like to call it "algorithmic rot". In otherwords, after a decade or
two the kernel just isn't the squeeky clean implementation it could be.
I get screamed at a lot when I try to clean the rot up, because half the
time it involves not only documenting code but also rewriting routines
that don't actually contain bugs in order to prevent future rot. Kinda
like wood sealer. The KASSERT()s work that way too. You put them in to
force out the bugs and to prevent new ones from entering.
-Matt
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