On Tue, 14 Jun 2016 15:50:37 +0200 Irrwahn <irrw...@freenet.de> wrote:
> We could play this game day in, day out for months or even > years, without having you grasp the basics necessary to > fully understand the implications of even moderately > sophisticated C programs. This discussion is getting theoretical, so allow me to discuss my theories... I think Edward's being sucked into a vortex of basics at lightning speed, and within a couple weeks will know as much about the basics necessary for Felker PID1 as you do (which would be twice what I know, I found your explanation really hit the spot). Different people learn differently: Perhaps Edward learns much faster from doing than from reading or receiving instruction. If he ends up in the same place, we have one more knowledgeable person in the group. I had been programming office automation packages in C for 20 years in 2014, and when I saw Felker PID1, it looked like Greek to me. I had to have a guy named Joel Rees explain what the hell it was doing, pretty much like you just explained to Edward. From then on, I knew what fork() and wait() and waitpid() did, without ever studying them beforehand. > It'd be like teaching integral > calculus to someone not having mastered multiplication yet: > frustrating for both student and teacher. I'd use a different analogy, but sometimes, for some people, it's better to learn the calculus first. > > There is no substitute for learning things from the bottom > up. There is no silver bullet! You *have* to go through the > basics to even have a chance of understanding more advanced > concepts. Yes, but in what order? It's very possible and practical to learn C in a need-to-know order, rather than studying all the system calls just to program a PDF watermarker. A real beauty of this thread started by Edward is it motivated you to give a very succinct explanation of the Felker PID1. Don't think for a minute that Edward was the only one who learned from your explanation: It reinforced my knowledge too, and I doubt I'm the only one. And your question about "why a shellscript?" got me to think about and get clear about the entire motivation for my writing the "Manjaro Experiments." Everywhere I go, with the exception of the supervis...@list.skarnet.org mailing list, I'm one of the most init-knowledgeable people in the group. I got that way by doing exactly what Edward's doing, and when I started in September 2014 I knew a heck of a lot less than Edward. It's called Curiosity Driven Learning, and even though it can seem crazy to people having all the foundational knowledge, it's probably the quickest way to acquire knowledge, and soon enough the foundational knowledge is acquired. Disclaimer: I have a dog in this fight because my book "Rapid Learning For the 21st Century" depends in large part on Curiosity Driven Learning. This is a really fun discussion. You don't hear anything like it over on Debian-User. SteveT Steve Litt June 2016 featured book: Troubleshooting: Why Bother? http://www.troubleshooters.com/twb _______________________________________________ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
