Re: [TUHS] CMU Mach sources?

On Wed, Jun 26, 2019 at 03:32:32PM -0400, Ben Greenfield via TUHS wrote: OK, I'll bite. Go read the source in the FreeBSD tree, which has been reduced in size by 60% according to someone on the team. Then come back and draw me a picture of what it does. I get that what I'm asking is non-trivial, I've tried to do it and failed. As a pretty green guy it took me months to do that for SunOS but I could feel myself getting closer. I never got that feeling in the Mach code, I kept getting lost in code that made me say "why is this here?" What I've been trying to say all along is getting something to work is different from making something that both works and is clean. When something is clean it is like a well written paper, it is actively trying to help you understand the information. I value clean code, and I'm not a fan of people excusing messy code because researchers did it. As someone said to me in private, those same researchers are expected to write clear and understandable papers, why is code any different? I also agree with whoever said the Mach guys were trying out all sorts of different ideas, that's cool. What's not cool is that when those ideas didn't pan out they left in all the substrate that had proven to be not needed. And I'll freely admit Mach left a sour taste in my mouth. I read all the papers and those lead me to believe that the code would be on par with the SunOS code. When I finally got to read it I felt like a kid who was promised nice things only to have them taken away.