From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.0 required=5.0 tests=MAILING_LIST_MULTI, RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 1540 invoked from network); 23 Jul 2020 14:43:56 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (45.79.103.53) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 23 Jul 2020 14:43:56 -0000 Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 6C8FD9C8DD; Fri, 24 Jul 2020 00:43:54 +1000 (AEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DD24D9C8AD; Fri, 24 Jul 2020 00:42:41 +1000 (AEST) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 3151E9C8AD; Fri, 24 Jul 2020 00:42:38 +1000 (AEST) Received: from mcvoy.com (mcvoy.com [192.169.23.250]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id BD89C93D09; Fri, 24 Jul 2020 00:42:36 +1000 (AEST) Received: by mcvoy.com (Postfix, from userid 3546) id 482F735E088; Thu, 23 Jul 2020 07:42:36 -0700 (PDT) Date: Thu, 23 Jul 2020 07:42:36 -0700 From: Larry McVoy To: arnold@skeeve.com Message-ID: <20200723144236.GK21077@mcvoy.com> References: <20200711203020.GA1884@minnie.tuhs.org> <03a8a0a84960ca40be4ea04b5cd1d780@yaccman.com> <202007230602.06N6243i013099@freefriends.org> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <202007230602.06N6243i013099@freefriends.org> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.24 (2015-08-30) Subject: Re: [TUHS] Technical decisions based on political considerations [was Re: AT&T Research] X-BeenThere: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.26 Precedence: list List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Cc: tuhs@tuhs.org Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org Sender: "TUHS" Amen to both comments. Especially Intel, I'm so happy to not be dealing with them. Just an example, they used Netapp's mirroring stuff - stuff that says in big bold letters "Mirrors are read only, you may not write to them". Of course they wrote to them and it didn't go well. They were using BitKeeper and they cloned a repo to a mirror. A clone in BK is basically ( cd from; tar cf - . ) | (mkdir to; cd to; tar xf -; bk repocheck) It is more complicated than that, it doesn't do a tar, it finds all the SCCS files and transfers those and a handful of etc files. And it has a bill of materials file that lists all the SCCS files. So a repocheck is sort of like find . -name 's.*' | check that list against the bill of materials When we unpacked the files and went to go look for them, half the files that we just wrote were "not there". They were there but there were no entries for them in the directory so it looked like they were not there. Intel said that BitKeeper was broken. For 3 months. After I gave them scripts that replicated what BitKeeper was doing but had no BitKeeper in them. After tuning those scripts so their so-called filer validation team could use them as a test system to verify that the filers worked. As a kernel guy, I did the most in depth work in file systems. I know what I'm talking about. But Intel said it was all Bitkeeper's fault. It wasn't, it was just that BitKeeper was the only application they had that did integrity checks. They finally backed down when I called Steve Kleinman who was CTO at Netapp and my mentor at Sun, he immediately said yeah, I know, it's us, that mirror shit sucks. And he called Intel. Intel is just an awful company. I know they pay Clem's bills, go Cleam, but Intel sucks. On Thu, Jul 23, 2020 at 12:02:04AM -0600, arnold@skeeve.com wrote: > scj@yaccman.com wrote: > > > The technical people I met all seemed > > competent -- it must be the management that was the difference... > > > I saw this *a lot* when I worked at Intel; being forced to use > the wrong tools for software development because of political > considerations instead of technical ones. One of the reasons I > was super glad to leave there and why I think that Intel as a > whole will never make it as a software company. (There are pockets > there that understand software, but the majority of the company > does not.) > > > Sorry, > > Arnold -- --- Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm