Messages in this thread |  | | Subject | Re: Coding style - a non-issue | Date | Sat, 1 Dec 2001 08:57:17 +0000 (GMT) | From | Alan Cox <> |
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> Here's a characteristic good Linux design method ,( or call it "less than random > mutation method" if that makes you feel happy): read the literature, > think hard, try something, implement it
That assumes computer science is a functional engineering discipline. Its not, at best we are at the alchemy stage of progression. You put two things together it goes bang and you try to work out why.
In many of these fields there is no formal literature. The scientific paper system in computer science is based on publishing things people already believe. Much of the rest of the knowledge is unwritten or locked away in labs as a trade secret, and wil probably never be reused.
Take TCP for example. The TCP protocol is specified in a series of documents. If you make a formally correct implementation of the base TCP RFC you won't even make connections. Much of the flow control behaviour, the queueing and the detail is learned only by being directly part of the TCP implementing community. You can read all the scientific papers you like, it will not make you a good TCP implementor.
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