Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Wed, 19 Dec 2001 12:41:58 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Wed, 19 Dec 2001 12:41:47 -0500 Received: from dsl-213-023-043-155.arcor-ip.net ([213.23.43.155]:13323 "EHLO starship.berlin") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id ; Wed, 19 Dec 2001 12:41:33 -0500 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII From: Daniel Phillips To: Larry McVoy Subject: IRC (was: Scheduler) Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 18:44:35 +0100 X-Mailer: KMail [version 1.3.2] Cc: Kernel Mailing List In-Reply-To:

<20011218130228.N26374@work.bitmover.com> In-Reply-To: <20011218130228.N26374@work.bitmover.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Message-Id: Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org On December 18, 2001 10:02 pm, Larry McVoy wrote: > Maybe I'm an old stick in the mud, but IRC seems like a big waste of > time to me. It's perfect for off the cuff answers and fairly useless > for thoughtful answers. We used to write well thought out papers and > specifications for OS work. These days if you can't do it in a paragraph > on IRC it must not be worth doing, eh? Hi Larry, It's a question of using the right tool for the job. As you know, email is no substitute for a traditional everybody-in-one-room design meeting. These days, with development distributed all over the world it's just not practical for everyone to physically get together more than a few times a year, so what can we do? Right, hang on IRC. In some ways IRC is more efficient than a face-to-face meeting: - You can do other things at the same time without offending anyone (usually) - Everything is logged for reference - You can copy code examples and URLs into the channel - It's normal to send/forward emails, perhaps with traditional papers attached, patches, whatever, while talking on the channel, or as a result of talking on the channel - It's there 24 hours a day - You can leave the meeting and do work any time you want to, as opposed to keeping some portion of a group of highly paid engineers bored and idle for hours at at time. IRC also solves a big problem for distributed companies: how can you be sure that your people are actually on the job? (You ping them on IRC and they respond.) While there's no doubt about IRC's value, there's also a danger: IRC is addictive. You can easily end up spending all your time there, and doing very little design/coding as a result. That's a matter of self-discipline. To put this into a more immediate perspective for you, suppose you wanted to get some traction under your SMP Clusters proposal? I'd suggest it's already been kicked around as much as it's going to be on lkml, and you already wrote your paper, so the next step would be to get together face-to-face with some folks who have a clue. Well, unless you're willing to wait months for the right people to show up in the Bay Area, IRC is the way to go. Come on in, the water's fine ;-) -- Daniel - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/