[Click] Click == ignorance || arrogance

[Eddie Kohler]

http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/2067

  From: Ashish sddf [email blocked]
  To:  linux-kernel
  Subject: Compiling C++ kernel module + Makefile
  Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2004 13:09:24 -0800 (PST)

  Hi, 
     I am trying to port a C++ kernel module from 2.4 to
  2.6. (It is MIT Click Modular Router). 
  ...


3 messages later:


  From: Richard B. Johnson [email blocked]
  Subject: Re: Compiling C++ kernel module + Makefile
  Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 13:39:43 -0500 (EST)

  The possibility that something may have been written by some MIT people
  can't change the fact that C++ is not the tool that should have been
  used within the kernel. I once worked on a project at Princeton. That
  doesn't make me know anything about Relativity. Einstein didn't rub
  off due to some proximity effect.

  If the "MIT Team", as you so state, had actually inspected some
  kernel code, and actually understood what a Linux/Unix kernel does,
  then learned persons could not possibly have selected C++ for this
  project.

  If you review the project, you will probably also find that a
  large percentage of the code should have been implemented in
  user-mode (a daemon, or several). That's where C++ really shines.

  However, it wasn't. Which, to me, means that the developers
  were either clue-less or, once somebody actually figured out
  how a kernel works, it was way too late to change (an all to common
  problem).

  The number of persons who worked on a project does not affect the
  correctness of the tools nor the architecture chosen. Facts are
  not democratic. You can't vote them into or out of existence.

  ...

  Cheers,
  Dick Johnson


This goes on (and on, and on -- but thanks, Bart Samwel!) until Linus
weighs in with a powerful "compilers sucked in 1992" argument.

Eddie