Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S1754303AbcLZAOE (ORCPT ); Sun, 25 Dec 2016 19:14:04 -0500 Received: from zeniv.linux.org.uk ([195.92.253.2]:45624 "EHLO ZenIV.linux.org.uk" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1753416AbcLZAOC (ORCPT ); Sun, 25 Dec 2016 19:14:02 -0500 Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2016 00:13:56 +0000 From: Al Viro To: Jonathan Cameron Cc: Scott Matheina , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org, Lars-Peter Clausen , Michael Hennerich , Jonathan Cameron , Hartmut Knaack , Peter Meerwald-Stadler , Greg Kroah-Hartman , linux-iio@vger.kernel.org, devel@driverdev.osuosl.org Subject: Re: [PATCHv4 2/8] Fixed variables not being consistently lower case Message-ID: <20161226001356.GM1555@ZenIV.linux.org.uk> References: <1482694902-7400-1-git-send-email-scott@matheina.com> <1482694902-7400-3-git-send-email-scott@matheina.com> <20161225201409.GL1555@ZenIV.linux.org.uk> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: User-Agent: Mutt/1.7.1 (2016-10-04) Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 3159 Lines: 56 On Sun, Dec 25, 2016 at 10:34:54PM +0000, Jonathan Cameron wrote: > > > On 25 December 2016 20:14:09 GMT+00:00, Al Viro wrote: > >On Sun, Dec 25, 2016 at 01:41:06PM -0600, Scott Matheina wrote: > >> Across the file, variables were sometimes upper case, some times > >> lower case, this fix addresses a few of the instances with this > >> inconsistency. > > > >NAK. Go learn C and don't come back until you've done that. If > >somebody > >has told you that you can contribute without knowing the language, > >they'd > >lied - you really can't. And I would *STRONGLY* recommend to stay away > >from drivers/staging while you are learning C - it's like trying to use > >a public restroom wall as a sex-ed textbook. > > Please can we keep things polite. In case you have not realized it, * Scott is -><- that close to joining the select group of kooks who get filtered out within days of getting a new account. At this point he probably still can spend a while learning what needs to be learnt and reappear with less inane patches after a while, with everything getting forgotten. A week more of the same kind of postings will almost certainly cement the reputation of clue-resistant noise source beyond any chance of repair. * I am 100% sure that he has not learnt C - hadn't even started doing so. This, BTW, is not a value judgement of any kind; it's just a highly likely conclusion based on what he'd been posting. This particular patch, for example, changes identifiers in a bunch of places, none of which happens to be a declaration. The reasons why that cannot be correct become obvious to anyone who had opened _any_ textbook after a few pages. Or tried to write and run any program in C. Again, it's not "should" - it's really one of the first things that gets learnt ("you need to declare all variables explicitly and the names are case-sensitive"). * One really cannot produce any useful patches without understanding the language. As this (and previous) patch series sent by Scott has demonstrated, BTW. Learning C is a hard prerequisite for doing any development in a project written in C, including the kernel. Fortunately, it is not hard to do. * Trying to do that purely by osmosis is not the best way, but it's doable. HOWEVER, trying to do that by osmosis when swimming in drivers/staging is really on par with using a WC wall as sex ed tutorial. Results will be awkward, painful and won't satisfy anybody. Very odd ideas of how the things work are also practically guaranteed. drivers/staging can serve as a playground for learning how to produce patches, but only if you already know the language. Otherwise it really, really must be avoided - it's full of unidiomatic and very badly written C. It serves as quarantine barracks for much more serious reasons than anything checkpatch.pl is capable of picking. Directing the folks new to kernel development towards that pile of code is not particularly kind, but potentially useful. Doing that to those who are still learning C goes far beyond "not kind". I can't stress it enough - don't go there if you are still learning the language.