On Sat, 9 Sep 2000, Linus Torvalds wrote:
> On Sat, 9 Sep 2000, Oliver Xymoron wrote:
> >
> > Tools are tools. They don't make better code. They make better code easier
> > if used properly.
>
> I think you missed the point of my original reply completely.
[...]
> It's about what kind of people you get.
[...]
> If you want to find the true carpenters today, what do you do? Not just "a
> carpenter". But THE carpenter.
>
> I'm saying that maybe you put up a carpentry shop where everything is
> lovingly hand-crafted and tools are not considered to be the most
> important part - or even necessarily good. And yes, some people
> (carpenters in every sense of the word) will be frustrated. They can't use
> the power-lathe that they are used to. It doesn't suit them. They _know_
> that they are missing something.
No. You set out to create a product you care about and create an
environment where good taste and talent (with or without particular tools)
is valued and shared. Outside of the debugger maintenance issue, that's
more or less what I see here today.
> But in the end, maybe the rule to only use hand power makes sense. Not
> because hand-power is _better_. But because it brings in the kind of
> people who love to work with their hands, who love to _feel_ the wood with
> their fingers, and because of that their holes are not always perfectly
> aligned, not always at the same place. The kind of carpenter that looks at
> the grain of the wood, and allows the grain of the wood to help form the
> finished product.
>
> The kind of carpenter who, in a word, is more than _just_ a carpenter.
>
> [ Insert a silent minute to contemplate the beaty of the world here. ]
>
> Go back and read my original reply to this thread.
>
> Really _understand_ the notion of two kinds of people.
I think I do. I also understand that half of the fun of producing any
program is to make something of utility, not a pure work of art. 'Show me
the code' means create something that works and don't spend the next 10
years doing it, no?
> And think about what kind of people you'd like to work with.
The primary mechanism for "selecting for" and encouraging those traits is
code review, not barriers to entry. Add an IKD build option and
maintainers will suddenly start accepting "this seems to fix it but I have
no idea why" patches? I don't think this follows.
More likely is that slightly more programmers, and therefore slightly more
potentially good programmers will get their feet wet in the kernel source
by attempting to debug their own problems.
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