Re: DTrace-like analysis possible with future Linux kernels?

Julien Oster
2004-08-19T23:21:03Z

Miles Lane <miles.lane@comcast.net> writes:

> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/08/dtrace_user_take/:
> "Sun sees DTrace as a big advantage for Solaris over other versions of Unix
> and Linux."

That article is way too hypey.

It sounds like one of those strange american commercials you see
sometimes at night, where two overenthusiastic persons are telling you
how much that strange fruit juice machine has changed their lives,
with making them loose 200 pounds in 6 days and improving their
performance at beach volleyball a lot due to subneutronic antigravity
manipulation. You usually can't watch those commercials for longer
than 5 minutes.

The same applies to that article, I couldn't even read it completely,
it was just too much.

And is it just me or did that article really take that long to
mentioning what dtrace actually IS?

Come on, it's profiling. As presented by that article, it is even more
micro optimization than one would think. What with tweaking the disk
I/O improvements and all... If my harddisk accesses were a microsecond
more immediate or my filesystem giving a quantum more transfer rate,
it would be nice, but I certainly wouldn't get enthusiastic and I bet
nobody would even notice.

Maybe, without that article, I would recognize it as a fine thing (and
by "fine" I don't mean "the best thing since sliced bread"), but that
piece of text was just too ridiculous to take anything serious.

I sure hope that article is meant sarcastically. By the way, did I
miss something or is profiling suddenly a new thing again?

Regards,
Julien