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From: michaelv@iastate.edu (Michael L. VanLoon)
Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.misc,comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: source of TCP/IP (was I hope this wont ignite a major flame ...)
Date: 4 Aug 94 01:42:41 GMT
Organization: Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa
Lines: 37
Message-ID: <michaelv.775964561@ponderous.cc.iastate.edu>
References: <31od8d$15l@fw.novatel.ca> <31pc9l$ctp@oscar.agcs.com>
NNTP-Posting-Host: ponderous.cc.iastate.edu
In <31pc9l$ctp@oscar.agcs.com> robertsw@agcs.com (Wallace Roberts) writes:
>hpeyerl@sidney.novatel.ca (Herb Peyerl) writes:
> [ ...snip happens... ]
>>I've tried reading Linux networking code. At least some of the device
>>drivers and each of the ones I looked at gave me a brain hemorrage...
>>
>>This is an example of some of the Linux device-drivers I've seen:
>>
>> short error = rx_status & 0x3C00;
>> outw(inw(ioaddr + 0x0A) | 0x00C0, ioaddr + 0x0A);
>>
>>As far as I can tell; Linux Ethernet device-drivers were written in
>>Write-Only-C. There are no comments in the surrounding code that in any
>>way indicates exactly what "0x3c00", "0x0a", "0x00c0" actually mean. To
>>people without docs (usually these are the people who are trying to fix
>>the code) the above is completely meaningless.
>if you're writing (or fixing) a device driver, you are expected to have
>the h/w manuals handy. comments are unnecessary if you have the device
>manual & understand the h/w. this is the expected level of competence
>for a programmer writing or fixing a device driver.
In other words: real hackers don't need comments, because they can
figure it out from the magic numbers.
Yup, that's a real strong argument. Sheesh! Even Microsoft writes
their code better than that... (Yes, I do know.)
--
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Michael L. VanLoon Iowa State University Computation Center
michaelv@iastate.edu Project Vincent Systems Staff
Free your mind and your machine -- NetBSD free Un*x for PC/Mac/Amiga/etc.
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