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FreeBSD Guru Matt Dillon Interviewed

Posted by timothy on from the drugstore-cowboy dept.

Jeremy writes: "KernelTrap has interviewed Matthew Dillon, a well-known FreeBSD kernel hacker. He has recently been in the spotlight due to many impressive NFS related bug fixes, as well as fixes to the TCP stack. In this interview he talks about these bug fixes as well as his history with computers, programming and FreeBSD. He also discusses Linux, open source, embedded systems, the Amiga (and his DICE C compiler), and much more."

2 of 13 comments (clear)

  1. Great Quote from the Article by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    "I admire Linus Torvalds for not going mad from all the raving lunatics who follow his every word as if it meant something really significant (Linus will be the first person to tell you that it doesn't)." -- Matt Dillon, of FreeBSD fame

  2. MD's view of short-term fixes. by Jayson · · Score: 2, Interesting
    This is why I hate bandaids. A bandaid, in the long term, only adds to the instability of a system. The correct solution is to make the code do what it is supposed to do and assert (panic the system) if it does something it isn't supposed to do. You might get a few panics in the short term, but in the long term you solve the problem. Permanently. Bandaids have the effect of causing problems to return and haunt you, sometimes for years. The dirty-cache-page bug was in the system for at least 3 years because of a bandaid.
    This makes Matt my hero. I wish everybody (including me) believed and followed this more.