Re:Why I prefer making useless stuff
by toast0 on Monday May 24, 2021 @01:10AM
(#27261249)
> Few things are farther away from day-to-day programming that a white-board problem, but kernel development might just be one of them.
Kernel development involves reading vague documentation (that might be wrong) and figuring out how to make things work with not always useful or immediate feedback. And reading other people's similar code to check for clues.
If that's not relevant to day to day development, I've been working at the wrong places. Yes, you don't do a whole lot of page tables day to day; but ocassionally you might need to make something work better or faster, and having deep knowledge of how you might put something like that together will help a lot as you dive into the murky depths of whatever actual OS you work with. Or you could open a support ticket with your vendor, I dunno, people always say that's an option, but I've never seen it happen, and it takes longer to make a clean example program to share outside the company than it does to dig in and fix the problem.
Kernel development involves reading vague documentation (that might be wrong) and figuring out how to make things work with not always useful or immediate feedback. And reading other people's similar code to check for clues.
If that's not relevant to day to day development, I've been working at the wrong places. Yes, you don't do a whole lot of page tables day to day; but ocassionally you might need to make something work better or faster, and having deep knowledge of how you might put something like that together will help a lot as you dive into the murky depths of whatever actual OS you work with. Or you could open a support ticket with your vendor, I dunno, people always say that's an option, but I've never seen it happen, and it takes longer to make a clean example program to share outside the company than it does to dig in and fix the problem.