Re: Minutes from Feb 21 LSE Call

Davide Libenzi
2003-02-24T18:29:13Z

On Sun, 23 Feb 2003, Larry McVoy wrote:

> > Because I don't see why I should waste my time running benchmarks just to
> > prove you wrong. I don't respect you that much, and it seems the
> > maintainers don't either. When you become somebody with the stature in the
> > Linux community of, say, Linus or Andrew I'd be prepared to spend a lot
> > more time running benchmarks on any concerns you might have.
>
> Who cares if you respect me, what does that have to do with proper
> engineering? Do you think that I'm the only person who wants to see
> numbers? You think Linus doesn't care about this? Maybe you missed
> the whole IA32 vs IA64 instruction cache thread. It sure sounded like
> he cares. How about Alan? He stepped up and pointed out that less
> is more. How about Mark? He knows a thing or two about the topic?
> In fact, I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who wouldn't be
> interested in seeing the cache effects of a patch.
>
> People care about performance, both scaling up and scaling down. A lot of
> performance changes are measured poorly, in a way that makes the changes
> look good but doesn't expose the hidden costs of the change. What I'm
> saying is that those sorts of measurements screwed over performance in
> the past, why are you trying to repeat old mistakes?

Larry, how many times this kind of discussions went on during the last
years ? I think you should remember pretty well because it was always you
on that side of the river pushing back "Barbarians" with your UP sword.
The point is that people ( expecially young ) like to dig where other
failed, it's normal. It's attractive like honey for bears. Let them try,
many they will fail, but chances are that someone will succeed making it
worth the try. And trust Linus, that is more on your wavelength than on
the huge scalabity one.

- Davide