Subject: Coding style - a non-issue
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From: "Peter Waltenberg" <pwal...@au1.ibm.com>
Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2001 00:40:10 +0100
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The problem was solved years ago.
"man indent"
Someone who cares, come up with an indentrc for the kernel code, and get it
into Documentation/CodingStyle
If the maintainers run all new code through indent with that indentrc
before checkin, the problem goes away.
The only one who'll incur any pain then is a code submitter who didn't
follow the rules. (Exactly the person we want to be in pain ;)).
Then we can all get on with doing useful things.
Cheers
Peter
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Original-Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2001 19:17:42 -0500 (EST)
From: Alexander Viro <v...@math.psu.edu>
To: Peter Waltenberg <pwal...@au1.ibm.com>
cc: linux-ker...@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Coding style - a non-issue
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On Thu, 29 Nov 2001, Peter Waltenberg wrote:
> The problem was solved years ago.
>
> "man indent"
>
> Someone who cares, come up with an indentrc for the kernel code, and get it
> into Documentation/CodingStyle
> If the maintainers run all new code through indent with that indentrc
> before checkin, the problem goes away.
> The only one who'll incur any pain then is a code submitter who didn't
> follow the rules. (Exactly the person we want to be in pain ;)).
indent does _not_ solve the problem of:
* buggers who think that MyVariableIsBiggerThanYourVariable is a
good name
* buggers who define a function with 42 arguments and body being
return (foo == bar) ? TRUE : FALSE;
* buggers who add 1001st broken implementation of memcmp(), call it
FooTurdCompare and prepend it with 20x80 block comment.
* buggers who use typedefs like WORD, DWORD, BYTE, IMANIDIOTSHOOTME
and other crap from the same source (OK, they don't write the last one
explicitly - not that it wasn't obvious from the rest of their, ahem, code).
* buggers who use Hungarian notation for no good reason and come up
with structure fields that sound like street names from R'Lyeh
* buggers who introduce wrappers for standard kernel stuff - like,
say it, typedef int Int32; and sprinkle their crap with per-architecture
ifdefs.
* buggers who think that cpp is Just The Thing and produce turds that
would make srb cringe in disgust.
Al, -><- close to setting up a Linux Kernel Hall of Shame - one with names of
wankers (both individual and coprorat ones) responsible, their code and
commentary on said code...
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Original-Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2001 16:23:17 -0800
From: Larry McVoy <l...@bitmover.com>
To: Alexander Viro <v...@math.psu.edu>
Cc: Peter Waltenberg <pwal...@au1.ibm.com>, linux-ker...@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Coding style - a non-issue
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> Al, -><- close to setting up a Linux Kernel Hall of Shame - one with names of
> wankers (both individual and coprorat ones) responsible, their code and
> commentary on said code...
Please, please, please, I'm begging you, please do this. It's the only way
people learn quickly. Being nice is great, but nothing works faster than
a cold shower of public humiliation :-)
--
---
Larry McVoy lm at bitmover.com http://www.bitmover.com/lm
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Original-Message-ID: <3C07B820.4108246F@mandrakesoft.com>
Original-Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2001 11:47:28 -0500
From: Jeff Garzik <jgar...@mandrakesoft.com>
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Subject: Re: Coding style - a non-issue
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The security community has shown us time and again that public shaming
is often the only way to motivate vendors into fixing security
problems. Yes, even BSD security guys do this :)
A "Top 10 ugliest Linux kernel drivers" list would probably provide
similar motivation.
Jeff
--
Jeff Garzik | Only so many songs can be sung
Building 1024 | with two lips, two lungs, and one tongue.
MandrakeSoft | - nomeansno
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Subject: Re: Coding style - a non-issue
From: Henning Schmiedehausen <h...@intermeta.de>
To: Jeff Garzik <jgar...@mandrakesoft.com>
Cc: Larry McVoy <l...@bitmover.com>, linux-ker...@vger.kernel.org
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On Fri, 2001-11-30 at 17:47, Jeff Garzik wrote:
Hi,
> The security community has shown us time and again that public shaming
> is often the only way to motivate vendors into fixing security
> problems. Yes, even BSD security guys do this :)
>
> A "Top 10 ugliest Linux kernel drivers" list would probably provide
> similar motivation.
A security issue is an universal accepted problem that most of the time
has a reason and a solution.
Coding style, however, is a very personal thing that start with "shall
we use TABs or not? (Jakarta: No. Linux: Yes ...) and goes on to "Is a
preprocessor macro a good thing or not" until variable names (Al Viro:
Names with more than five letters suck. :-) Java: Non-selfdescriptive
names suck. Microsoft: Non-hungarian names suck) and so on.
And you really want to judge code just because someone likes to wrap
code in preprocessor macros or use UPPERCASE variable names?
Come on. That's a _fundamental_ different issue than dipping vendors in
their own sh** if they messed up and their box/program has a security
issue. Code that you consider ugly as hell may be seen as "easily
understandable and maintainable" by the author. If it works and has no
bugs, so what? Just because it is hard for you and me to understand (cf.
"mindboggling unwind routines in the NTFS" (I thing Jeff Merkey stated
it like this). It still seems to work quite well.
Are you willing to judge "ugliness" of kernel drivers? What is ugly? Are
Donald Beckers' drivers ugly just because they use (at least on 2.2)
their own pci helper library? Is the aic7xxx driver ugly because it
needs libdb ? Or is ugly defined as "Larry and Al don't like them"? :-)
Flaming about coding style is about as pointless as flaming someone
because he supports another sports team. There is no universal accepted
coding style. Not even in C.
Regards
Henning
--
Dipl.-Inf. (Univ.) Henning P. Schmiedehausen -- Geschaeftsfuehrer
INTERMETA - Gesellschaft fuer Mehrwertdienste mbH h...@intermeta.de
Am Schwabachgrund 22 Fon.: 09131 / 50654-0 i...@intermeta.de
D-91054 Buckenhof Fax.: 09131 / 50654-20
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Message-ID: <linux.kernel.3C07BFE8.5B32C49C@evision-ventures.com>
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2001 18:20:40 +0100
From: Martin Dalecki <dale...@evision-ventures.com>
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Subject: Re: Coding style - a non-issue
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Jeff Garzik wrote:
>
> The security community has shown us time and again that public shaming
> is often the only way to motivate vendors into fixing security
> problems. Yes, even BSD security guys do this :)
>
> A "Top 10 ugliest Linux kernel drivers" list would probably provide
> similar motivation.
Yehh.... However some of the uglinesses results from ignorance
on behalf of the overall kernel maintainers, who don't care
to apply "cosmetic" changes to drivers, just to don't
irritate the oftes so called "maintainer". Two expierences:
ftape and mcd I'm through....
BTW.> ftape (for the pascal emulation) and DAC960
(for the silly ICantReadThisCasing)
are my personal "top ranks" in regard
of the contest for the most ugly code in the kernel...
serial.c is another one for the whole multiport support which
may be used by maybe 0.1% of the Linux users thrown on them all
and some "magic" number silliness as well...
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Subject: Re: Coding style - a non-issue
To: h...@intermeta.de (Henning Schmiedehausen)
Original-Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2001 17:31:39 +0000 (GMT)
Cc: jgar...@mandrakesoft.com (Jeff Garzik), l...@bitmover.com (Larry McVoy),
linux-ker...@vger.kernel.org
In-Reply-To: <1007140529.6655.37.camel@forge> from "Henning Schmiedehausen"
at Nov 30, 2001 06:15:28 PM
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> Flaming about coding style is about as pointless as flaming someone
> because he supports another sports team. There is no universal accepted
> coding style. Not even in C.
The kernel has an accepted coding style, both the documented and the
tradition part of it. Using that makes life a lot lot easier for maintaining
the code. Enforcing it there is a good idea, except for special cases
(headers shared with NT has been one example of that).
There are also some nice tools around that will do the first stage import of
a Hungarian NT'ese driver and linuxise it.
Alan
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Subject: Re: Coding style - a non-issue
To: dale...@evision.ag
Original-Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2001 17:53:13 +0000 (GMT)
Cc: jgar...@mandrakesoft.com (Jeff Garzik),
h...@intermeta.de (Henning Schmiedehausen),
l...@bitmover.com (Larry McVoy), linux-ker...@vger.kernel.org
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> irritate the oftes so called "maintainer". Two expierences:
> ftape and mcd I'm through....
I timed the mcd maintainer out and tidied it anyway. I figured since it
wasnt being maintained nobody would scream too loudly - nobody has
> BTW.> ftape (for the pascal emulation) and DAC960
ftape is an awkward one. Really the newer ftape4 wants merging into the
kernel but that should have happened a long time ago
> serial.c is another one for the whole multiport support which
> may be used by maybe 0.1% of the Linux users thrown on them all
> and some "magic" number silliness as well...
serial.c is a good example of the "ugly" that actually matters more, as is
floppy.c. Clean well formatted code that is stil opaque.
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Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2001 10:13:08 -0800
From: Larry McVoy <l...@bitmover.com>
X-To: Daniel Phillips <phill...@bonn-fries.net>
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Jeff Garzik <jgar...@mandrakesoft.com>, linux-ker...@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Coding style - a non-issue
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On Fri, Nov 30, 2001 at 06:49:11PM +0100, Daniel Phillips wrote:
> On the other hand, the idea of a coding style hall of shame - publicly
> humiliating kernel contributers - is immature and just plain silly. It's
> good to have a giggle thinking about it, but that's where it should stop.
If you've got a more effective way of getting people to do the right thing,
lets hear it. Remember, the goal is to protect the source base, not your,
my, or another's ego.
I used to think Sun's approach was pretty brutal, and I still do actually.
But I haven't found anything else which works as well. I don't use that
technique at BitMover, instead I rewrite code that I find offensive. That's
less annoying to the engineers but it is also a lot more costly in terms of
my time. Since we're a small company, I can keep up. When we double in
size, I won't be able to do so and I suspect we'll revert to the Sun way.
--
---
Larry McVoy lm at bitmover.com http://www.bitmover.com/lm
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From: Daniel Phillips <phill...@bonn-fries.net>
Subject: Re: Coding style - a non-issue
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2001 19:50:09 +0100
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On November 30, 2001 07:13 pm, Larry McVoy wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 30, 2001 at 06:49:11PM +0100, Daniel Phillips wrote:
> > On the other hand, the idea of a coding style hall of shame - publicly
> > humiliating kernel contributers - is immature and just plain silly. It's
> > good to have a giggle thinking about it, but that's where it should stop.
>
> If you've got a more effective way of getting people to do the right thing,
> lets hear it. Remember, the goal is to protect the source base, not your,
> my, or another's ego.
Yes, lead by example, it's at least as effective. Maybe humiliation works at
Sun, when you're getting a paycheck, but in the world of volunteer
development it just makes people walk.
--
Daniel
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Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2001 20:10:13 +0100
From: Larry McVoy <l...@bitmover.com>
Subject: Re: Coding style - a non-issue
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On Fri, Nov 30, 2001 at 07:43:01PM +0100, Daniel Phillips wrote:
> On November 30, 2001 07:13 pm, Larry McVoy wrote:
> > On Fri, Nov 30, 2001 at 06:49:11PM +0100, Daniel Phillips wrote:
> > > On the other hand, the idea of a coding style hall of shame - publicly
> > > humiliating kernel contributers - is immature and just plain silly. It's
> > > good to have a giggle thinking about it, but that's where it should stop.
> >
> > If you've got a more effective way of getting people to do the right thing,
> > lets hear it. Remember, the goal is to protect the source base, not your,
> > my, or another's ego.
>
> Yes, lead by example, it's at least as effective.
I'd like to see some data which backs up that statement. My experience is
that that is an unsupportable statement. You'd need to know how effective
the Sun way is, have seen multiple development organizations using that
way and other ways, and have watched the progress.
I'm in a somewhat unique position in that I have a lot of ex-Sun engineers
using BitKeeper and I have a pretty good idea how fast they make changes.
It's a lot faster and a lot more consistent than the Linux effort, in fact,
there is no comparison.
I'm not claiming that the coding style is the source of their speed, but
it is part of the culture which is the source of their speed.
As far as I can tell, you are just asserting that leading by example is
more effective. Am I incorrect? Do you have data? I have piles which
shows the opposite.
> Maybe humiliation works at
> Sun, when you're getting a paycheck, but in the world of volunteer
> development it just makes people walk.
Huh. Not sure I agree with that either. It's definitely a dicey area
but go through the archives (or your memory if it is better than mine)
and look at how the various leaders here respond to bad choices. It's
basically public humiliation. Linus is especially inclined to speak
his mind when he sees something bad. And people stick around.
I think the thing you are missing is that what I am describing is a lot
like boot camp. Someone with more knowledge and experience than you
yells at your every mistake, you hate it for a while, and you emerge
from boot camp a stronger person with more skills and good habits as
well as a sense of pride. If there was a way to "lead by example" and
accomplish the same goals in the same time, don't you think someone
would have figured that out by now?
--
---
Larry McVoy lm at bitmover.com http://www.bitmover.com/lm
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From: Daniel Phillips <phill...@bonn-fries.net>
Subject: Re: Coding style - a non-issue
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2001 23:00:15 +0100
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On November 30, 2001 08:05 pm, Larry McVoy wrote:
> Huh. Not sure I agree with that either. It's definitely a dicey area
> but go through the archives (or your memory if it is better than mine)
> and look at how the various leaders here respond to bad choices. It's
> basically public humiliation. Linus is especially inclined to speak
> his mind when he sees something bad. And people stick around.
There's an additional pattern, you'll notice that the guys who end up wearing
the dung are the ones with full time Linux programming jobs, who basically
have no option but to stick around. Do that to every newbie and after a
while we'll have a smoking hole in the ground where Linux used to be.
A simple rule to remember is: when code is bad, criticize the code, not the
coder.
> I think the thing you are missing is that what I am describing is a lot
> like boot camp. Someone with more knowledge and experience than you
> yells at your every mistake, you hate it for a while, and you emerge
> from boot camp a stronger person with more skills and good habits as
> well as a sense of pride.
Thanks, but I'll spend my summer in some other kind of camp ;-) I'm sure it
works for some people, but mutual respect is more what I'm used to and prefer.
> If there was a way to "lead by example" and
> accomplish the same goals in the same time, don't you think someone
> would have figured that out by now?
Somebody did, and as hard as it is for some to fit it into their own model of
the universe, there is somebody leading by example, not running a command
economy but a self-organizing meritocracy. Do we achieve the same goals in
the same time? Sometimes it doesn't seem like it, but because this thing
just keeps crawling relentlessly forward on a thousand fronts, in the end we
accomplish even more than Sun does.
--
Daniel
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Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2001 14:06:13 -0800
From: Larry McVoy <l...@bitmover.com>
X-To: Daniel Phillips <phill...@bonn-fries.net>
X-Cc: Larry McVoy <l...@bitmover.com>, Henning Schmiedehausen <h...@intermeta.de>,
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Subject: Re: Coding style - a non-issue
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This is my last post on this topic, I don't think I can say more than I have.
On Fri, Nov 30, 2001 at 10:54:39PM +0100, Daniel Phillips wrote:
> On November 30, 2001 08:05 pm, Larry McVoy wrote:
> > Huh. Not sure I agree with that either. It's definitely a dicey area
> > but go through the archives (or your memory if it is better than mine)
> > and look at how the various leaders here respond to bad choices. It's
> > basically public humiliation. Linus is especially inclined to speak
> > his mind when he sees something bad. And people stick around.
>
> There's an additional pattern, you'll notice that the guys who end up wearing
> the dung are the ones with full time Linux programming jobs, who basically
> have no option but to stick around. Do that to every newbie and after a
> while we'll have a smoking hole in the ground where Linux used to be.
>
> A simple rule to remember is: when code is bad, criticize the code, not the
> coder.
Your priorities are upside down. The code is more important than the
coder, it will outlive the coder's interest in that code. Besides,
this isn't some touchy feely love fest, it's code. It's suppose to
work and work well and be maintainable. You don't get that by being
"nice", you get that by insisting on quality. If being nice worked,
we wouldn't be having this conversation.
> > I think the thing you are missing is that what I am describing is a lot
> > like boot camp. Someone with more knowledge and experience than you
> > yells at your every mistake, you hate it for a while, and you emerge
> > from boot camp a stronger person with more skills and good habits as
> > well as a sense of pride.
>
> Thanks, but I'll spend my summer in some other kind of camp ;-) I'm sure it
> works for some people, but mutual respect is more what I'm used to and prefer.
The problem here is that you are assuming that yelling at someone means
that you don't respect that someone. Nothing could be further from the
truth. If you didn't respect them enough to think you could get good
results from them, I doubt you'd be yelling at them in the first place.
Don't confuse intense demands for excellence with a lack of respect,
that's not the case.
> > If there was a way to "lead by example" and
> > accomplish the same goals in the same time, don't you think someone
> > would have figured that out by now?
>
> Somebody did, and as hard as it is for some to fit it into their own model of
> the universe, there is somebody leading by example, not running a command
> economy but a self-organizing meritocracy. Do we achieve the same goals in
> the same time? Sometimes it doesn't seem like it, but because this thing
> just keeps crawling relentlessly forward on a thousand fronts, in the end we
> accomplish even more than Sun does.
Bah. Daniel, you are forgetting that I know what Sun has done first hand
and I know what Linux has done first hand. If you think that Linux is
at the same level as Sun's OS or ever will be, you're kidding yourself.
Linux is really cool, I love it, and I use it every day. But it's not
comparable to Solaris, sorry, not even close. I'm not exactly known for
my love of Solaris, you know, in fact I really dislike it. But I respect
it, it can take a licking and keep on ticking. Linux isn't there yet
and unless the development model changes somewhat, I'll stand behind my
belief that it is unlikely to ever get there.
--
---
Larry McVoy lm at bitmover.com http://www.bitmover.com/lm
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Subject: Re: Coding style - a non-issue
From: Henning Schmiedehausen <h...@intermeta.de>
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On Fri, 2001-11-30 at 17:47, Jeff Garzik wrote:
Hi,
> The security community has shown us time and again that public shaming
> is often the only way to motivate vendors into fixing security
> problems. Yes, even BSD security guys do this :)
>
> A "Top 10 ugliest Linux kernel drivers" list would probably provide
> similar motivation.
A security issue is an universal accepted problem that most of the time
has a reason and a solution.
Coding style, however, is a very personal thing that start with "shall
we use TABs or not? (Jakarta: No. Linux: Yes ...) and goes on to "Is a
preprocessor macro a good thing or not" until variable names (Al Viro:
Names with more than five letters suck. :-) Java: Non-selfdescriptive
names suck. Microsoft: Non-hungarian names suck) and so on.
And you really want to judge code just because someone likes to wrap
code in preprocessor macros or use UPPERCASE variable names?
Come on. That's a _fundamental_ different issue than dipping vendors in
their own shit if they messed up and their box/program has a security
issue. Code that you consider ugly as hell may be seen as "easily
understandable and maintainable" by the author. If it works and has no
bugs, so what? Just because it is hard for you and me to understand (cf.
"mindboggling unwind routines in the NTFS" (I thing Jeff Merkey stated
it like this). It still seems to work quite well.
Are you willing to judge "ugliness" of kernel drivers? What is ugly? Are
Donald Beckers' drivers ugly just because they use (at least on 2.2)
their own pci helper library? Is the aic7xxx driver ugly because it
needs libdb ? Or is ugly defined as "Larry and Al don't like them"? :-)
Flaming about coding style is about as pointless as flaming someone
because he supports another sports team. There is no universal accepted
coding style. Not even in C.
Regards
Henning
--
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Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2001 19:00:18 +0100
From: Alexander Viro <v...@math.psu.edu>
Subject: Re: Coding style - a non-issue
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X-Original-Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2001 12:55:11 -0500 (EST)
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On 30 Nov 2001, Henning Schmiedehausen wrote:
> issue. Code that you consider ugly as hell may be seen as "easily
> understandable and maintainable" by the author. If it works and has no
> bugs, so what? Just because it is hard for you and me to understand (cf.
... it goes without peer review for years. And that means bugs.
Fact of life: we all suck at reviewing our own code. You, me, Ken Thompson,
anybody - we tend to overlook bugs in the code we'd written. Depending on
the skill we can compensate - there are technics for that, but it doesn't
change the fact that review by clued people who didn't write the thing
tends to show bugs we'd missed for years.
If you really don't know that by your own experience - you don't _have_
experience. There is a damn good reason for uniform style within a
project: peer review helps. I've lost the count of bugs in the drivers
that I'd found just grepping the tree. Even on that level review catches
tons of bugs. And I have no reason to doubt that authors of respective
drivers would fix them as soon as they'd see said bugs.
"It's my code and I don't care if nobody else can read it" is an immediate
firing offense in any sane place. It may be OK in academentia, but in the
real life it's simply unacceptable.
It's all nice and dandy to shed tears for poor, abused, well-meaning company
that had made everyone happy by correct but unreadable code and now gets
humiliated by mean ingrates. Nice image, but in reality the picture is
quite different. Code _is_ buggy. That much is a given, regardless of
the origin of that code. The only question is how soon are these bugs
fixed. And that directly depends on the amount of efforts required to
read through that code.
Sigh... Ironic that _you_ recommend somebody to grow up - I would expect
the level of naivety you'd demonstrated from a CS grad who'd never worked
on anything beyond his toy project. Not from somebody adult.
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Subject: Re: Coding style - a non-issue
From: Henning Schmiedehausen <h...@intermeta.de>
X-To: Alexander Viro <v...@math.psu.edu>
X-Cc: Jeff Garzik <jgar...@mandrakesoft.com>, Larry McVoy <l...@bitmover.com>,
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On Fri, 2001-11-30 at 18:55, Alexander Viro wrote:
Hi,
> On 30 Nov 2001, Henning Schmiedehausen wrote:
>
> > issue. Code that you consider ugly as hell may be seen as "easily
> > understandable and maintainable" by the author. If it works and has no
> > bugs, so what? Just because it is hard for you and me to understand (cf.
>
> ... it goes without peer review for years. And that means bugs.
That's right. And I didn't say, that _this is a good thing_. The
question was (and is IMHO), "do we put such code into a "hall of driver
writer shame" or do we either just reject the code from the kernel tree
or do we help "the poor misunderstood vendor" to convert.
Simply flaming them down will definitely not help. As someone with your
experience should know, too.
> Sigh... Ironic that _you_ recommend somebody to grow up - I would expect
> the level of naivety you'd demonstrated from a CS grad who'd never worked
> on anything beyond his toy project. Not from somebody adult.
You're welcome.
I'm willing to give you a bet: You put up such a "hall of shame" and we
will see what comes first:
a) media echo that "linux core developers start insulting code
committers"
or
b) vendors start cleaning up their code.
Regards
Henning
--
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INTERMETA - Gesellschaft fuer Mehrwertdienste mbH h...@intermeta.de
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Original-Date: Sun, 2 Dec 2001 21:13:09 +0100
From: Pavel Machek <pa...@suse.cz>
To: Henning Schmiedehausen <h...@intermeta.de>
Cc: Alexander Viro <v...@math.psu.edu>, Jeff Garzik <jgar...@mandrakesoft.com>,
Larry McVoy <l...@bitmover.com>, linux-ker...@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Coding style - a non-issue
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Hi!
> > Sigh... Ironic that _you_ recommend somebody to grow up - I would expect
> > the level of naivety you'd demonstrated from a CS grad who'd never worked
> > on anything beyond his toy project. Not from somebody adult.
>
> You're welcome.
>
> I'm willing to give you a bet: You put up such a "hall of shame" and we
> will see what comes first:
>
> a) media echo that "linux core developers start insulting code
> committers"
>
> or
>
> b) vendors start cleaning up their code.
Question is... what hurts us more. Bad press or bad code? I guess bad
code is worse...
Pavel
--
"I do not steal MS software. It is not worth it."
-- Pavel Kankovsky
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Newsgroups: mlist.linux.kernel
Subject: Re: Coding style - a non-issue
X-To: pa...@suse.cz (Pavel Machek)
Date: Sun, 2 Dec 2001 21:28:00 +0000 (GMT)
X-Cc: h...@intermeta.de (Henning Schmiedehausen),
v...@math.psu.edu (Alexander Viro),
jgar...@mandrakesoft.com (Jeff Garzik), l...@bitmover.com (Larry McVoy),
linux-ker...@vger.kernel.org
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Message-ID: <linux.kernel.E16Ae9Y-0004c9-00@the-village.bc.nu>
From: Alan Cox <a...@lxorguk.ukuu.org.uk>
Approved: n...@nntp-server.caltech.edu
Lines: 24
> > a) media echo that "linux core developers start insulting code
> > committers"
> >
> > b) vendors start cleaning up their code.
>
> Question is... what hurts us more. Bad press or bad code? I guess bad
> code is worse...
What would be much much more constructive isnt quite a hall of shame - its
to build a set of pages that take problem drivers and quote chunks of them
with an explanation of _why_ it is wrong, what should be used instead and
possible the "after" code if it also gets cleaned up.
That way people coming along actually learn something from it. Anyone can
be a critic, its rather harder and much more valuable to be a critic that
actually has positive impacts on what you criticize
Alan
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