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Top Linux Developers Losing the Will To Code?

Posted by CmdrTaco on Mon Jul 02, 2007 10:19 AM
from the will-hack-for-food dept.
Software Programming Linux IT Technology
E5Rebel noted that Don Marti has a piece that talks about "Core Linux developers are finding themselves managing and checking, rather than coding, as the number of kernel contributors grows and the contributor network becomes more complex."
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  • This is Bad? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Rachel Lucid (964267) on Monday July 02 2007, @10:24AM (#19717827) Homepage Journal
    They're probably getting older, too.

    Perhaps the less coding you do the higher you get up in the management ladder is for a reason, after all...

    • Re:This is Bad? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by houghi (78078) on Monday July 02 2007, @12:40PM (#19719633) Homepage
      I would say it is the other way around. The higher you get up, the lesser you code.

      I also do not see this as a bad thing. One good coder with manager skills or manager with coding skills can be more productive when he manages people.

    • Getting older and coding (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mckyj57 (116386) on Monday July 02 2007, @01:14PM (#19720009)
      Programmer burnout is a well-known, if not well understood, phenomenon.

      As far as older, I don't think age has much to do with burnout. I started a major open-source project after the age of 40, my first big programming project after a career change. (I am one of the few managers that then became a coder.)

      I am now pretty burned out. It isn't that I can't write code -- in fact, I am better than ever. I just don't *want* to write code any more.

      • Re:Getting older and coding (Score:4, Funny)

        by mrdarreng (1120603) on Monday July 02 2007, @06:01PM (#19723225)

        I just don't *want* to write code any more.


        I feel your pain, brother! I've spent my entire career not wanting to write code. Thankfully, I took a dev position at SCO.
        • Speaking from my own experience, i found that what motivates me to code has changed over time.

          First it was the technical challenge;
          Second the challenge was to earn money from my skill (not very successfully)
          The challenge for me now is design.

          I see free software as an art, code is just the medium in which a design is implemented.

          I dont care if my project has fancy features, i dont care if time spent on it can be justified from a commerical perspective. Its just about solving a problem that people (developers
    • It is far better to have the more experienced folk checking the contributions of others. This builds a broader base of contrubutors and the more seasoned folk get to ensure that the Good Stuff is getting in to the kernel/whatever.

      Experience does count, and age is not a limitation. There's a myth that older people can't program. At 45 I reckon I can outprogram most youngsters, but it is probably more valuable to be mentoring others. I know a few very active programmers in their 60s and even 70s.

      Old good prog

  • will has nothing to do with it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 02 2007, @10:25AM (#19717835)
    the talented get promoted to managing because they care about what's happening, how it gets done, and they know what's going on. This doesn't equate to "I don't feel like coding" as the article suggests.

    "That's all I do, is read patches these days," he said during a discussion at the Linux Symposium in Ottawa last month.

    This doesn't read "I don't want to code" it reads "I haven't time to code"

  • a good or bad thing? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by brunascle (994197) on Monday July 02 2007, @10:25AM (#19717839)
    that's odd. the linux.com article [linux.com] covering the same event made it sound like the kernel team thought it was a good thing that there were more developers, and the work was more spread out.

    • I think the question is more ... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by khasim (1285) <brandioch.conner@gmail.com> on Monday July 02 2007, @10:37AM (#19718015)
      ... how has the amount of code they actually approve and that gets into the kernel changed?

      Once you become a guru coder, you may write less code yourself, but you may approve more code over all. That would be code written by other people that you check, tell them where the bugs are and they fix the bugs and re-submit the code.

      When the code is up to your standards (and the evidence is the flat rate of bugs) then the code is included in the kernel.

      There was a time (long ago) when Linus wrote ALL of the code himself. If you look at just that metric, Linus barely writes anything anymore (percentage-wise).

      • Re:I think the question is more ... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by zCyl (14362) on Monday July 02 2007, @01:45PM (#19720423)

        When the code is up to your standards (and the evidence is the flat rate of bugs) then the code is included in the kernel.

        There was a time (long ago) when Linus wrote ALL of the code himself. If you look at just that metric, Linus barely writes anything anymore (percentage-wise).

        This of course implies that code is now checked more times and more carefully BEFORE inclusion, which is a win for everyone.

  • So? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Actually, I do RTFA (1058596) on Monday July 02 2007, @10:26AM (#19717851)

    This is what happens as projects get bigger. It's not that they lose the "will to code", it's that they spend all their time as managers of other coders. There's more to developing a large codebase than writing the code after all.

  • Will? (Score:5, Informative)

    by truthsearch (249536) on Monday July 02 2007, @10:26AM (#19717855) Homepage Journal
    I read the first page and didn't see anything about them losing their will to code. It seems just the sheer number of innovative contributions means they have more to manage and less to write. This can't be a surprise with so many individuals and companies now contributing.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I think it's appropriate that a PHP mug has an error on it. I think the next one should have a sql injection attack.

  • Git (Score:3, Insightful)

    by CarpetShark (865376) on Monday July 02 2007, @10:26AM (#19717857)
    Isn't this what Linus said that Git was supposed to fix?

    I wonder are the rest using it... I wonder are the rest even delegating.

    • Re:Git (Score:5, Informative)

      by CarpetShark (865376) on Monday July 02 2007, @10:31AM (#19717931)
      To clarify: Linus gave a talk at google, where he spoke of Git as part of the solution to this problem, and his shear lack of interest in helping "subordinate" (my word, for want of a better one, not his) developers. He said, essentially, that if people don't write proper patches, or if they write patches that conflict with other patches, he doesn't spend time integrating: he throws it back, and says do it again. Likewise, he doesn't manage tons of individual patches; he delegates to others, who spread the load. If the "lieutenants" aren't handling their part, they just need to learn from Linus.

        • Re:Git (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Dan Ost (415913) on Monday July 02 2007, @12:10PM (#19719299)
          This is actually an example of good management (or, more correctly, management knowing its own limits).

          Bouncing the patch back to the original author is exactly the correct thing to do. There's no way that Linus can be as familiar with the patch code as the person who wrote it, so why would he think that he could do a better job integrating than the original author?

  • It's just maturation: projects evolve (Score:3, Insightful)

    by postbigbang (761081) on Monday July 02 2007, @10:28AM (#19717891)
    New projects open all the time. As the FOSS code base increases, it's easier to move code around. Once one takes on responsibility for a project, the new code vs maintenance code is always going to change. And there are thousands of projects where someone gets bored, moves on, or whatever, where the project then becomes stuck in the mud. SourceForge is full of them. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong, it's the fits-and-spurts of how coding works.

    Nothing to worry about. It's natural.
  • You do not have to be a top coder to help develop Linux. The top developers have the skill sets needed to write and manage code. These talents are needed. The top developers can mentor the next generation/level of talent and raise them up to a higher level. This helps to ensure quality and continuation of so many great projects past the time when the original "guru(s)" have moved on to their next itch.

    Everyone can help in some way. The newbies who read the "Linux Recipes" online and point out areas of
  • They are not loosing the will to code. They just have too much other work, like reviewing others code. So they do not have enough time left to code. RTFA. The headline is not reflected in the article itself at all.

    • Re:Not loosing the will (Score:5, Funny)

      by All Names Have Been (629775) on Monday July 02 2007, @11:55AM (#19719099)
      They are not loosing the will to code. They just have too much other work, like reviewing others code. So they do not have enough time left to code. RTFA. The headline is not reflected in the article itself at all.

      I'm loosing the will to spell.

  • The Mythical Man Month (Score:5, Interesting)

    by $RANDOMLUSER (804576) on Monday July 02 2007, @10:35AM (#19717983)
    Described this in 1975. As you add more people to a project, communication takes up more time than coding. From Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]:

    Assigning more programmers to a project running behind schedule will make it even later, due to the time required for the new programmers to learn about the project, as well as the increased communication overhead. When N people have to communicate among themselves (without a hierarchy), as N increases, their output M decreases and can even become negative (i.e. the total work remaining at the end of a day is greater than the total work that had been remaining at the beginning of that day, such as when many bugs are created).

    * Group Intercommunication Formula: n(n 1) / 2
    * Example: 50 developers -> 50(50 1) / 2 = 1225 channels of communication

    • Re:The Mythical Man Month (Score:5, Insightful)

      by flaming-opus (8186) on Monday July 02 2007, @10:47AM (#19718133)
      This assumes that the kernel is a single common software project.

      It isn't. A few filesystem developers might have to make changes to elevator, or allocator code, but most developers of XXXXfs don't really need to make changes outside of that directory. Developers writing a driver for the XXXX model scsi controller, don't really need to interact with the people mucking with Alsa, or gart, or whatever.

      The kernel might be contained in a single source repository, but it's really a few hundred, mostly-independent software projects.
      • That's exactly why it's totally ridiculous that it is contained in a single source repository!

        Need a newer version of the USB subsystem, or a fix to a driver? Have fun downloading a new version of Linux, which has an ungodly number of changes across the entire kernel.

        People tend to think of monolithic/micro kernel only in terms of run-time technical advantages/disadvantages. But equally important IMO is the impact on development processes. With a good microkernel architecture, it would be totally reasona
  • There really needs to be a howto or book on how to write a linux device driver. I feel even more people would be willing to help out if they had a bridge between "just learn C" to "you're now a kernel guru"

    Granted if you're a good enough programmer you can traverse the source tree and pick up things on your own, but that is very time consuming versus "here's a quick overview" then look at the code for specifics.

    • Re:Book needed (Score:5, Informative)

      by fattmatt (1042156) on Monday July 02 2007, @10:42AM (#19718075)
      http://lwn.net/Kernel/LDD3/ [lwn.net]
      • Sweet! and it's under a creative commons license so you can download it as a pdf. Though if it is as good as it seems I'll definately support it by buying the pulp version. Thanks for the link.
      • Thank you. I've nothing constructive to add to the discussion but I felt that your efforts needed acknowledgement!

    • There really needs to be a howto or book on how to write a linux device driver.

      You mean like http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/linuxdrive3/ [oreilly.com]?

    • I feel even more people would be willing to help out if they had a bridge between "just learn C" to "you're now a kernel guru"

      Just a little searching on Google and Amazon netted me the following two titles:

      The resources for understanding the Linux kernel are out there, you just have to have the motivation and interest to look for them.

    • Here is a tutorial from Greg KH from Ottawa Linux Symposium 2005 (and 2006):
      http://www.kroah.com/linux/talks/ols_2005_driver_t utorial/ [kroah.com]
      And sample code for a USB thermometer
      http://www.kroah.com/linux/talks/ols_2005_driver_t utorial_example_code.tar.gz [kroah.com]

    • Re:Book needed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MROD (101561) on Monday July 02 2007, @10:55AM (#19718265) Homepage
      The problem is that with almost every minor kernel version revision the driver interface is changed, so any book that goes into print will already be almost worthless by the time it got into the shops.

      This is why the current fluid kernel/driver interface specification is unsustainable and unmanagable in the long term (and why ultimately the kernel development process will bog down).

      The solution? Simple, separate the core kernel from the drivers and produce a specification for the interface which only changes with the major kernel version. Then the kernel developers can concentrate on the pure internals of the kernel which no-one but them should need to know about and the work which currently takes place to recode the hundreds of drivers each time there's a tweek to the driver interface could be redirected to more productive efforts... and the patch load should be less as well.

      There is a side benefit to this as well, the energy barrier for 3rd parties to write drivers would be lower and hence it would be far more likely that they'd actually write them rather than management seeing the driver maintenance and support costs being too high to bother because of the constant code churn.

      I know that there are many people who will veremently disagree with this because of the dogma saying, "the kernel hackers know best about the kernel so they should be the same people as those who write the drivers." There will also be those who believe the dogma of, "but the driver interface needs to change often so as to be Better(tm) so you can't set the interface in stone."

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by MROD (101561)
          I didn't actually mention black-box binary-only drivers or even those not released under the GPL, that's a totally separate issue. This is a maintainability issue and the costs to companies to keep modifying their code almost every time there's a minor kernel version change.

          If a company can assign programming resources once off for a driver project and not have to spend extra resources every few months just because of a change in the kernel interface then they will look far more kindly on the idea of develo
    • Is something like this [lwn.net] what you mean?
  • It happens in every aspect of IT, or certainly the ones I have been involved in. As manpower increases, the longest served ops, sysadmins, programmers, whatever, get more responsibility pushed on them and therefore do more managing and less of what they were hired to do. Linux is a classic case of a large scale software project and I would expect the 'names' of the project to do less, perhaps even against their wishes. Someone mentioned Git, which is a very good way of managing this kind of project, but I g
  • If you only have X hours to spend on a project you should choose the activities that will be most beneficial.

    As much as technical guys don't want to think about it, good management is an excellent productivity multiplier, alternatively no/poor management is a productivity destroyer.

    Some well directed management and control will often result in the team getting more additional work being done than if the "manager" did it himself.

    Think about all the times the senior guy, or the suits rejected blocked or other
  • As the number of contributors grow and the network becomes more and more complex you NEED management who understand the task at hand. Dilbert, and I'm sure most people out there, suffer from BAD management. We all know how bad management can doom a great project.

    I am sure that they miss coding but are they working on linux to satisfy their own coding desires or to make linux a better product. If it is the former then they have no reason to be in management, but if it is the later then they are needed where
  • ...and ike any long term programming project new people will replace the once core coders and will be overseen by previous core coders. why is this news?

  • Welcome to programming (Score:3, Insightful)

    by hikerhat (678157) on Monday July 02 2007, @11:00AM (#19718335)
    This is how it always works. Once you have enough experience doing anything, from building houses to writing code, you start to spend more time sheepherding the less experienced and less time implementing. It's the circle of life. I didn't rtfa.

  • Where's the beef? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by billsf (34378) <billsf.cuba@calyx@nl> on Monday July 02 2007, @11:46AM (#19718977) Homepage Journal
    People simply tend to get more managerial as they get older. This extra proofreading, checking and review has resulted in a fantastic product. While BSD is my primary computer interest, I've maintained a Linux box since 2.6.16 to follow the most current developments. I'm running 2.6.22 now and have great respect for the way they use SMP to enhance reliability. Short of a hardware failure, it simply doesn't crash. The way I use a computer, getting an hour uptime out of XP would be rather remarkable.

    BillSF

  • Management is just another form of coding (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Fractal Dice (696349) on Monday July 02 2007, @12:15PM (#19719359) Journal
    They haven't stopped coding, they just code in a higher language - just as C can take care of all that dirty assembler for you, a human coder can take care of all that dirty C. You just sit back, watch the code flow past, filter it and nudge it in the directions you need it to go. It's bleeding edge technology, it's just the system requirements are a little steep for most of us to assemble - give it a few decades and I'm sure we'll all be coding this way :)

  • Fundamental Flaws (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rAiNsT0rm (877553) on Monday July 02 2007, @01:31PM (#19720243) Homepage
    I spend a lot of time online trying to get through to folks on this issue but everyone just blows it off. I have been a Linux user/contributer for over 12 years now and have nothing but the best interests in what I say. The biggest problem is the fact that the only area to have any management and direction is the kernel. The rest is far too chaotic and self-serving to ever become a cohesive system.

    Some examples: OS X. In ten years or so a fairly small team has taken BSD and turned it into what it is. In over 12 with Linux I still see many of the same issues and problems persist... why? Because Apple *focuses* their efforts and the entire project is properly managed and steered. Imagine with the same focus and direction what the huge amount of OSS talent could accomplish?

    Interoperability. Most applications are one-off programs made with no thought or care as to how it fits in the bigger picture. Unification, interoperability, and consistency are very important.

    Fleeting Nature. Projects worked on while in college, hosted on random servers, work/girlfriends/distractions. These all can bring even successful and popular projects down overnight.

    What needs to happen is to work under a single focus to create the most perfect distribution possible with clearly defined goals and concepts. Democracy, choice, and chaos have their place and they can be utilized still... just with some oversight and management before it goes live. Once there is a very good foundation (such as how OS X is now) then folks can branch out and work on their own projects and offshoots. I'm not suggesting that all choice needs to be eradicated, just that instead of trying to build a million individual sandcastles on a foundation of Jell-o we could be building a mansion on a sheet of bedrock.

    The talent is here, the passion is here, the momentum is here... the oversight and direction is not.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by swillden (191260) *

      OS X. In ten years or so a fairly small team has taken BSD and turned it into what it is.

      More like 20 years. OS X is NeXTstep [wikipedia.org] with a facelift and a few years of minor revisions. NeXTstep development began in 1986 and the first release was in 1989. Not only that, but a typical Linux disto is significantly larger than OS X, since it includes a large variety of applications that Apple doesn't include in OS X, and many of which Apple doesn't even make.

      The pace of Linux development is phenomenally fast, in spite of (or perhaps because of?) all of the false starts and dead projects.

      Imagine with the same focus and direction what the huge amount of OSS talent could accomplish?

      With focu

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by rAiNsT0rm (877553)
        And you sir have summed up the exact problem here. You've glossed over the fact that nothing from NeXTstep just showed up magically working on BSD, it had to be coded from the ground up new. The point was it was done, done well, and in fairly short order.

        You honestly believe that 300 half-working yet-another-whatever-app that is just as buggy as the other 299 is better than 1 or 2 excellent apps with more eyes and talent focused on them? There is a point when a million and one false starts gets exasperating

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by swillden (191260) *

          You've glossed over the fact that nothing from NeXTstep just showed up magically working on BSD, it had to be coded from the ground up new.

          I'm not sure whether you're talking about the original development effort or something more recent. Just to be clear, NeXTstep was always on BSD.

          In any case, your rant completely misses the point. You came closest (by virtue of being most wrong) when you said:

          This isn't about FUN it is about being part of something greater, and the fun you sacrifice to be part of it instead of going nowhere by yourself is reaped tenfold when you get to the end and see what a huge impact you *helped* to create.

          There are a lot of OSS developers, and they all have their own reasons, but FUN is a *huge* part of it for most of them. For example, I'm a professional software developer, have been for nearly 20 years, and I often find that the stuff I work

            • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

              by swillden (191260) *

              also want to have "fun" and working on something cool when I write OSS code... but that doesn't mean I can't be working inside of some sort of high-level constraint or with some design/integration in mind

              The only issue I have with this is that it implies that OSS programmers typically aren't working with some overarching design in mind, and that simply isn't true. Spend some time on project mailing lists looking at how many patches get rejected because they don't fit within the architecture and development approach. Successful OSS projects have a ruthless focus on maintainability, which absolutely requires consistent application of well-defined architectural constraints.

              I'm saying there needs to be visionaries with a full view of the big picture and then it actually makes it easier for everyone else from there down.

              People are certainly welcome to

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by pschmied (5648)
      Most software shops have dedicated architects. In many cases, those architects can be blowhards with little practical skills, but a good architect can actually do a lot of good for a project. The same can be said of a good project manager.

      The strength / weakness of the Open Source model is that it collapses these structures into a flatter skill space. On the bright side, coders get to scratch their itch and prove that their employers' architects are simply wankers that hold them back. On the down side,

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ajs318 (655362)
      Eiffel? No, they wanted something that would actually run.

      That's why people still use languages like C. It's quick to get a program together, even if it doesn't do exactly what you wanted first time. You fix the mistakes and try again. Each time you go around the loop, there should be fewer bugs (but Sod's Law says that each one will take longer to find). After just a few generations, you end up with a mostly-usable program.

      With all these fancy-arsed "designed so mistakes are impossible" languages

    • Re:Should have used Eiffel (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Fujisawa Sensei (207127) on Monday July 02 2007, @11:26AM (#19718735)

      Perhaps you need to get a little deeper into kernel development to find out why Eiffel is a bad choice:

      • Exceptions in kernel space suck. You can look through AROS ML archives for an example of this.
      • In kernel space you don't have access to the standard C libraries, malloc() for instance.
      • Not only don't you have access to standard C functions, you don't want your memory managed for you, that's the kernel's job.

      In summary languages that do stuff for you behind the scenes suck for kernel development.

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