[COFF] [TUHS] Interview question

[Warner Losh]

On Mon, Jan 2, 2023 at 7:59 PM Larry McVoy <lm at mcvoy.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Jan 02, 2023 at 02:13:45PM -0700, Adam Thornton wrote:
> > Which of these, if any, do you count?
>
> Any of them that are entirely done by you.
>

With due respect, this seems like an impossible thing to have done. I think
it's an arbitrary question.

"No man is an Island" John Donne.

Nobody on this list can claim to have anything they did entirely by
themselves. Everybody used tools built by others. Everybody used an OS
built by others. Even people that did a full OS + all the tools used other
tools to boostrap that were done by others. They used hardware that was
designed by others, made from chips made by others from raw materials mined
by others.

We all "stand on the shoulders of giants"[*]. While I get the connection to
looking for someone that's independent, self sufficient, etc, it seems a
bit arbitrary. I've done a ton of work on the FreeBSD kernel, for example,
but it isn't all 100% me. Others have contributed to it, others have
reviewed my work, others have given me (or the project) bug fixes. That
project, as with so many others, are so much better due to the
collaboration that happened between people. In many ways that's more
important than doing something 100% yourself.

Warner

[*] "If I have seen further it is by standing on the sholders[sic] of
others" -- Isaac Newton in a 1675 letter to his rival Robert Hooke
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