On Wed, 6 Sep 2000, Linus Torvalds wrote:
>
>
> On Wed, 6 Sep 2000, Marco Colombo wrote:
> >
> > As you said, the are two kinds of reactions. I don't understand why you
> > think that the presence of a debugger will *prevent* people from doing
> > the Right Thing and "think about problems another way". Are debuggers so
> > evil? Will a KDB option in the standard tarball seduce ALL the smart guys
> > , and even YOU, and lead you all to the Dark Side? Do you believe a
> > debugger has such a power?
>
> Go back. Read the mail again.
>
> Read the part about weeding out the people who are not careful.
>
> Think about it.
>
> Carefully.
I've done.
I understand you want to implement a filter. You are not trying to increase
the quality of Linux kernel developers as a group, you're just implementing
a 'high level' filter on your mailbox (something procmail is not able to
handle yet), just letting only the people you like in. In that, yes,
you're a bastard. B-) Your right, anyway.
I also understand your 'rabbits' arguments. You don't buy me with them.
Human brains are quite different from rabbits. All historical attempts
to improve them *by selection* failed soundly. You simply don't make people
better *reducing* their freedom. A good programmer is a good programmer
no matter how many debuggers are available out there. I do believe that
Linux kernel programming is NOT the place to start learing programming
at all. So, most kernel newbie are already experienced programmers.
They may have the kind of "taste" you like or not, but hardly you're
going to change thier habits. The ones with a bad taste won't be able
to produce patches / bug fixes anyway, so what's the deal? Even if
this is just a mail filter, it is not an effective one. Programmers
who are not careful, the ones you don't like, are not going to produce
anything. With or without a debugger. And even if they produce bad
patches, you, or some of the guys you like, will look at them, just
to see where the bug is, and produce better ones.
Of course, all this under the statement that 'you include into your
tarballs whatever you like'. I'm not advocating the inclusion of anything
into the "standard" kernel. I'm just replying to your arguments.
[ I put this sentence last since I'm a bastard, too... B-) ]
>
> Linus
>
> -
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>
.TM.
--
____/ ____/ /
/ / / Marco Colombo
___/ ___ / / Technical Manager
/ / / ESI s.r.l.
_____/ _____/ _/ Colombo@ESI.it
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Sep 15 2000 - 21:00:14 EST