Re: source mgt. requirements solicitation

[Linus Torvalds <torvalds at transmeta dot com>]

On 15 Dec 2002, Momchil Velikov wrote:
> >>>>> "Linus" == Linus Torvalds <torvalds@transmeta.com> writes:
>
>     Linus> Crap crap crap arguments. Trust me, there are more
>     Linus> intelligent people out there than you believe, and they can
>     Linus> do a hell of a lot better work than you currently allow
>     Linus> them to do. Often with very little formal schooling.
>
> But yes, there are lots of intelligent people out there, but while
> intelligence is usually sufficient for working on a kernel, working on
> a compiler requires _knowledge_ (no matter formal or not).

Blaah. I _bet_ that is not true.

I actually had my own gcc tree for Linux kernel development back when I
started, mostly because I just enjoyed it and found the compiler
interesting. I added builtins for things like memcpy() etc because I cared
(and it was more fun that writing assembly language library routines), and
because gcc at that time didn't have hardly any support for things like
that.

I didn't understand the whole compiler, BUT THAT DID NOT MATTER. The same
way that most Linux kernel developers don't understand the whole kernel,
and do not even need to.  Sure, you need people with specialized knowledge
for specialized areas (designing the big picture etc), but that's a small
small part of it.

To paraphrase, programming is often 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.

In short, your argument is elitist and simply _wrong_.  It's true that to
create a whole compiler you need a whole lot of knowledge, but that's true
of any project - including operating systems. But that doesn't matter,
because there isn't "one" person who needs to know everything.

				Linus