Introduction

Hi!

My credentials are in electrical engineering and just before I retired 
(almost three year ago) I was reading through the Intel spec's on the 
latest chip sets ; as I needed to understand physical data flow 
bottlenecks. From early childhood I was not only interested in 
electronics, but in electronic computers. This stuff is something I do 
because I really like it, not because it was my profession.

I have programmed in many languages. There are several I only wrote one 
program with just to explore the language. There are some examples 
below. Sometimes I am still amazed by the number of new languages being 
published. After I look them over though I laugh at the huge 
similarities to the ones the pre-existed them. My first experience as a 
student was with with Fortran and SPS on an old IBM 1620 I found “laying 
around”. After that I wrote a fair amount of machine code (hex) and some 
BAL for IBM 360. After I was working and microprocessors became 
available, there weren't any programmers around for them; so the 
electrical engineers who implemented the processors in hardware also 
wrote the software. A fact I was very happy about. I wrote hex code for 
the Motorola 6800 and later I did a little for the 68000. I also wrote a 
fair amount of code in Pascal on a VAX computer. Pascal was all they had 
on that machine and they didn't want to buy another license.

Later when PCs became available in a form similar to those commonly in 
use today, I wrote useful code in Smalltalk, Lisp, Java. The first two 
were connected to an AI project I worked on. The Java was control code 
for a mechanism not for web pages. In the 1980s I was sent by one of the 
companies I worked for to take C classes. I took all classes, but then 
the project was canceled; so I never had a chance to use it. Things I 
learned in the C classes, like the ease with which memory leaks were 
created, lead be to have a strong aversion for it . I never pursued C 
after that.

Since I abandon Windows, about F16 ago, and started using Fedora, I've 
been writing in Python. I've always held the opinion that code should be 
well organized and easy to follow. After I wrote my first thousand lines 
of python I went and got the style guide and found to my satisfaction 
that my code, with one exception was compliant. I've never taken classes 
in Python; so I won't present myself as being ready to start writing 
Python for Fedora. Though I just purchased a course from the Teaching 
Company that uses Python for all the code work. I haven't started it yet 
so I can say more about it.

My tiny contributions to Fedora so far has been running the canned 
regression tests on Linux. I got a FAS account so I could submit the 
results, but since I haven't joined a group yet that was about all I 
could do. As I was think further about it it seemed like testing would 
be a good place to start.

[Gavin Flower]

On 20/02/18 06:57, pmkellly(a)frontier.com wrote:
>  Hi!
>
>  My credentials are in electrical engineering and just before I retired 
>  (almost three year ago) I was reading through the Intel spec's on the 
>  latest chip sets ; as I needed to understand physical data flow 
>  bottlenecks. From early childhood I was not only interested in 
>  electronics, but in electronic computers. This stuff is something I do 
>  because I really like it, not because it was my profession.
>
>  I have programmed in many languages. There are several I only wrote 
>  one program with just to explore the language. There are some examples 
>  below. Sometimes I am still amazed by the number of new languages 
>  being published. After I look them over though I laugh at the huge 
>  similarities to the ones the pre-existed them. My first experience as 
>  a student was with with Fortran and SPS on an old IBM 1620 I found 
>  “laying around”. After that I wrote a fair amount of machine code 
>  (hex) and some BAL for IBM 360. After I was working and 
>  microprocessors became available, there weren't any programmers around 
>  for them; so the electrical engineers who implemented the processors 
>  in hardware also wrote the software. A fact I was very happy about. I 
>  wrote hex code for the Motorola 6800 and later I did a little for the 
>  68000. I also wrote a fair amount of code in Pascal on a VAX computer. 
>  Pascal was all they had on that machine and they didn't want to buy 
>  another license.
>
>  Later when PCs became available in a form similar to those commonly in 
>  use today, I wrote useful code in Smalltalk, Lisp, Java. The first two 
>  were connected to an AI project I worked on. The Java was control code 
>  for a mechanism not for web pages. In the 1980s I was sent by one of 
>  the companies I worked for to take C classes. I took all classes, but 
>  then the project was canceled; so I never had a chance to use it. 
>  Things I learned in the C classes, like the ease with which memory 
>  leaks were created, lead be to have a strong aversion for it . I never 
>  pursued C after that.
>
>  Since I abandon Windows, about F16 ago, and started using Fedora, I've 
>  been writing in Python. I've always held the opinion that code should 
>  be well organized and easy to follow. After I wrote my first thousand 
>  lines of python I went and got the style guide and found to my 
>  satisfaction that my code, with one exception was compliant. I've 
>  never taken classes in Python; so I won't present myself as being 
>  ready to start writing Python for Fedora. Though I just purchased a 
>  course from the Teaching Company that uses Python for all the code 
>  work. I haven't started it yet so I can say more about it.
>
>  My tiny contributions to Fedora so far has been running the canned 
>  regression tests on Linux. I got a FAS account so I could submit the 
>  results, but since I haven't joined a group yet that was about all I 
>  could do. As I was think further about it it seemed like testing would 
>  be a good place to start.
>
>
>
>  _______________________________________________
>  test mailing list -- test(a)lists.fedoraproject.org
>  To unsubscribe send an email to test-leave(a)lists.fedoraproject.org 
Hi,

Am not officially connected with Fedora nor Red Hat.  So this is pure my 
personal opinion!

I think with your low level skills with Intel Chip sets, that you would 
be well place to review kernel code relating to such - if you can 
overcome your aversion to C.  You might like to look at http://lkml.org 
- am not a kernel hacker, so can't advise further...

The first three languages I got paid to use were FORTRAN IV, COBOL, and 
ICL 4/72 Assembler.


Cheers,
Gavin

[Adam Williamson]

On Mon, 2018-02-19 at 12:57 -0500, pmkellly(a)frontier.com wrote:
>  Hi!
>  
>  My credentials are in electrical engineering and just before I retired 
>  (almost three year ago) I was reading through the Intel spec's on the 
>  latest chip sets ; as I needed to understand physical data flow 
>  bottlenecks. From early childhood I was not only interested in 
>  electronics, but in electronic computers. This stuff is something I do 
>  because I really like it, not because it was my profession.
>  
>  I have programmed in many languages. There are several I only wrote one 
>  program with just to explore the language. There are some examples 
>  below. Sometimes I am still amazed by the number of new languages being 
>  published. After I look them over though I laugh at the huge 
>  similarities to the ones the pre-existed them. My first experience as a 
>  student was with with Fortran and SPS on an old IBM 1620 I found “laying 
>  around”. After that I wrote a fair amount of machine code (hex) and some 
>  BAL for IBM 360. After I was working and microprocessors became 
>  available, there weren't any programmers around for them; so the 
>  electrical engineers who implemented the processors in hardware also 
>  wrote the software. A fact I was very happy about. I wrote hex code for 
>  the Motorola 6800 and later I did a little for the 68000. I also wrote a 
>  fair amount of code in Pascal on a VAX computer. Pascal was all they had 
>  on that machine and they didn't want to buy another license.
>  
>  Later when PCs became available in a form similar to those commonly in 
>  use today, I wrote useful code in Smalltalk, Lisp, Java. The first two 
>  were connected to an AI project I worked on. The Java was control code 
>  for a mechanism not for web pages. In the 1980s I was sent by one of the 
>  companies I worked for to take C classes. I took all classes, but then 
>  the project was canceled; so I never had a chance to use it. Things I 
>  learned in the C classes, like the ease with which memory leaks were 
>  created, lead be to have a strong aversion for it . I never pursued C 
>  after that.
>  
>  Since I abandon Windows, about F16 ago, and started using Fedora, I've 
>  been writing in Python. I've always held the opinion that code should be 
>  well organized and easy to follow. After I wrote my first thousand lines 
>  of python I went and got the style guide and found to my satisfaction 
>  that my code, with one exception was compliant. I've never taken classes 
>  in Python; so I won't present myself as being ready to start writing 
>  Python for Fedora. Though I just purchased a course from the Teaching 
>  Company that uses Python for all the code work. I haven't started it yet 
>  so I can say more about it. 
I suspect most of the people writing Python for Fedora haven't taken
any classes in it! (I certainly haven't; I'm a proud graduate of the
University of StackOverflow...)

>  My tiny contributions to Fedora so far has been running the canned 
>  regression tests on Linux. I got a FAS account so I could submit the 
>  results, but since I haven't joined a group yet that was about all I 
>  could do. As I was think further about it it seemed like testing would 
>  be a good place to start. 
Hi there, and welcome! Great to have you on board. Unfortunately it
seems your FAS account is not under this same email address and I
couldn't find a similar one in the list of people waiting to join qa,
so I can't add you to the group yet. Could you let us know your FAS ID
so I can add you to the group? Thanks!
-- 
Adam Williamson
Fedora QA Community Monkey
IRC: adamw | Twitter: AdamW_Fedora | identi.ca: adamwfedora
http://www.happyassassin.net

[Russel Winder]

On Sat, 2018-03-03 at 08:11 -0800, Adam Williamson wrote:
>   
[…]
>  I suspect most of the people writing Python for Fedora haven't
> taken
>  any classes in it! (I certainly haven't; I'm a proud graduate of the
>  University of StackOverflow...) 
Sadly there is an awful lot of ancient stuff on StackOverflow that is
worse than useless and counter productive for learning, you have to use
it with great care, especially for initial learning. Also of course a
lot of good stuff is so out of date now it is bad stuff.

Programmers tend not to make enough use of asking for and getting
feedback from experts on the code they write, and of reading code and
sharing views on it with experts.
 
>  > […] 
-- 
Russel.
==========================================
Dr Russel Winder      t: [phone]
41 Buckmaster Road    m: [phone]
London SW11 1EN, UK   w: www.russel.org.uk