OSDev.org

Brendan wrote:Hi,

I definately don't want an advanced forum and a beginner forum - it'd take about 1 month before people stopped responding to questions in the beginner forum and most beginners would just post in the advanced forum.

I'm not too sure about having a design forum and an implementation forum. It'd be difficult to avoid confusion about what should be considered design and what should be considered implementation. I'm not even sure if it's possible to design something properly without considering implementation details, or to implement something properly without considering the design.

As an exercise I created a new topic ("OS Support For Transactional Memory"). I carefully worded this post to make it purely design. I challenge everyone here to create a sane and constructive reply to this topic without getting into implementation details. I honestly don't think it's possible.


Cheers,

Brendan

Well. I think I fell right into that trap there. Quite frankly though I wasted about a hour replying to that..

I still proved the point partially I bet since I resorted to a example of a implementation at the end, and even asked for more specific details of the implementation you had in mind.

Colonel Kernel wrote:TM is definitely advanced. Problems setting up a GCC cross-compiler, hardware questions, etc. are not IMO.

IMO = In my OPINION, which is exactly why it couldn't be an advanced forum. For someone just starting OS development everything seems advanced. I think we all have about the same idea in mind but how do you convey that to the new osdev people and still encourage the experts to bother reading their posts and helping?

To be totally blunt, whether or not there is an advanced forum, I'm not going to be helping people with hardware or development environment questions. I simply don't have the time (case in point, it's 8:30 PM, and I'm still at work). I'm fortunate to have the time I do to discuss OS design topics at all. As it turns out, I don't have the specialized knowledge to help beginners either (other than what's already written up in the wiki). I don't think having a separate forum will discourage anyone from doing anything.

When it comes to what topics belong in what forum, I say leave that to the moderators to decide. Their opinion is good enough for me.

I think we can make one easy distinction for what qualifies for an Advanced Development and Theory: unanswered questions. I do not simply mean questions that someone has asked, but questions that nobody has ever answered. Or at least, questions to which none of us have ever heard the answer.

We've all fielded basic hardware, file-system, multi-threading, and tool-chain questions before. But how many times *have* we answered questions about putting software transactional memory in the kernel?

I think we've clearly shown that an audience exists for an advanced forum, but we have to resolve what belongs in such a board and how to keep enough people answering questions in the new developers' forum that they don't just post in Advanced.

Lets live life on the edge. Just do everything wrong and see what turns out right.

The (above) is a good example of how I think when I wake up. Then it slowly turns into:

Lets just not do anything that requires a lot of movement.

And at the end of the day:

This living life on the edge has created more problems than I have time for.

Kevin McGuire wrote:Lets live life on the edge. Just do everything wrong and see what turns out right.

The (above) is a good example of how I think when I wake up. Then it slowly turns into:

Lets just not do anything that requires a lot of movement.

And at the end of the day:

This living life on the edge has created more problems than I have time for.

If you use that for everything, how many children do you have?

I am a computer nerd. I have no time for sex.


PS: If anyone has a talking frog I'll send a offer.

Kevin McGuire wrote:I am a computer nerd. I have no time for sex.

PS: If anyone has a talking frog I'll send a offer.

You wanna "do" Kermit? You my friend.. scare the heck out of me..

OK, we've had about three design/theory topics in the Development section now.

The first one went on for a good long time. The second one had a decent lifespan, but not as long. The third one never garnered more than two or three posters, perhaps due to lack of interest in addition to burial in starter topics.

Can we consider this string evidence for the need of an Advanced Development/Theory/Design section? We only seem to create long design/theory topics when we deliberately try to create long design/theory topics.

Or how about this: an Advanced Wiki section. We all know that the Wiki needs improvement, especially in the more advanced topics. We could put up an Advanced Topics board dedicated to new Wiki articles or proposed (ie: possibly contested, non-trivial) changes to Wiki pages. When people reach a consensus or agree to disagree, they write what they now know about design/theory into the Wiki for everyone to use.

Edit: I correct myself. The first and third advanced/design topics didn't even get off their first pages. The second one ("OS Support for Transactional Memory") got to a second page before petering out.

Well, history tells no tales. Thats good enough evidence for me to know it would not work.

Brynet-Inc wrote: You wanna "do" Kermit? You my friend.. scare the heck out of me.. Laughing

No. I have no time for that. I just want to carry the talking frog around to show people. I think it would awesome.

Perhaps those three topics didn't work because

A) They got buried in the average deluge of "How do I start an OS?" topics.
B) People actually have to learn something to understand them.

B is especially important here. We want people to learn things. So why do we keep an arrangement that discourages topics that require learning?

Did some organization on the forums today. If the Design & Theory forum doesn't work I can always merge it back in with the regular development forum. I also merged and deleted some of the lesser used forums so we weren't going up in forum count. I also updated the home page.

chase wrote:Did some organization on the forums today. If the Design & Theory forum doesn't work I can always merge it back in with the regular development forum. I also merged and deleted some of the lesser used forums so we weren't going up in forum count. I also updated the home page.

Ooh, nice!

chase wrote:Did some organization on the forums today. If the Design & Theory forum doesn't work I can always merge it back in with the regular development forum. I also merged and deleted some of the lesser used forums so we weren't going up in forum count. I also updated the home page.

I like the new scheme a lot. Much neater, and easier to figure out what's meant to go where. I hope it works well... though I have one question, where's the project announcements forum?

Edit: never mind, found it...

How do we go about nominating old threads from the Development forum to be moved to the Design & Theory forum?