Hi Rene, Martyn and Wolfram and anyone else who might be watching this
thread;
I have garnered your credentials from your signature and addresses;
therefore I am doublely appreciative of the time and effort you have put
into these thoughtful responses.
On Fri, 2008-07-11 at 11:14 +0200, Rene Herman wrote:
> On 11-07-08 09:08, William Case wrote:
>
[big snip for brevity -- I have saved your response for future use]
>
> If not already clear from the masses of text trying to be helpful above,
> I'm sort of satisfied that your question wasn't necessarily intellectual
> wankage. Hope you'll find this useful.
It is not intellectual wankage. Reading and questioning are the only
way I know how to dig down to the bottom.
I am going to mull over what you have said and combine it with whatever
else I have learned for a few days.
To quote from Martyn's last post:
"Given the number of texts you have apparently read, I'd have thought
you'd already have a very good mental understanding of how a kernel
functions, even if you can't put it easily into words."
I have, in fact, read those texts from cover to cover over a three year
span. You can see the list in my response to Kyle Spaans and in
particular, to Pranav Peshwe, both in this thread.
I am always mindful of "A little bit of learning is a dangerous thing".
That is why I posed my original question on this list -- rather than
just sailing off into the blue yonder with "the answer".
While I am mulling I am going to be thinking of three thinks at least:
1. I still have the suspicion, that experienced kernel programers
have a mental map, construct, or guide posts -- call it what you
will -- that you use, to locate within kernel code, the place,
function, line, or whatever, to start trouble shooting, fixing
or creating a piece of the kernel. It may have been gained by
osmosis resulting from years of experience, but still I believe,
that it is probably there in your heads somewhere. Of course,
extracting this is biggest problem in expert systems.
2. If 1. is not true, I will have to figure out which kernel tasks
to analyze, play with or re-do that can give me the highest
learning and memorization cost benefit.
3. Or if 1. and 2. are not good strategies, begin to enumerate some
of the kernel mysteries that I have come up against and then go
looking for eureka moments as answers.
I will close with some reflections on Martyn's London subway analogy
"when trying to find the closest tube station in London, I
don't need to have a mental model for the entire road layout of the UK.
A local A-to-Z will be much more useful than an atlas. "
That is a perfect real life example of what disturbs me. You as a
Londoner only need a street guide. The same for me in Ottawa -- I have
lived here a long time. I know all the major cross streets and land
marks and I have a generalized layout of most of the major cities and
towns in the country. In Canada that is a major accomplishment; Canada
is a big place.
When I visited London as a tourist, one of the first things I did was
take the tube. I remember going down one level and there was a big wall
map of all the tube lines and all the stations in London. Many of the
stations had names that were historically or culturally familiar but
their relationship to each other and their location within the City of
London were completely unknown to me as a Canadian Tourist. A few
minutes study of that map gave me the layout of the City of London that
I can remember today.
During my month visit to London, I often got lost, took the wrong tube,
missed my station or got off at the wrong one. But I could still move
around the city with a certain confidence that even if I got off track,
I had enough information in my head to recover.
And -- I am sure that experience is the same for almost all tourists.
Perhaps, all that I am looking for is a subway map.
--
Regards Bill;
Fedora 9, Gnome 2.22.3
Evo.2.22.3.1, Emacs 22.2.1
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