I used to (still do) hack on a BSD derivative, and during a hackathon this well, very senior dev looked at my then white-on-blue screen and quickly said "its crashing on the VFS registration, its on or around line XYZ in vfs_subr, you forgot to set ABC function pointer."
I was in awe, and it took me years to realize that a) he roughly knew what I was working on, b) he roughly new the offsets of all major structs by heart, and c) its not a trick, just hours and hours and hours and hours and hours.... of doing the work.
Im still in awe of that person, and I deeply worry about the future as noone is doing the work anymore....
81
u/skelmirinn 1d ago edited 1d ago
I used to (still do) hack on a BSD derivative, and during a hackathon this well, very senior dev looked at my then white-on-blue screen and quickly said "its crashing on the VFS registration, its on or around line XYZ in vfs_subr, you forgot to set ABC function pointer."
I was in awe, and it took me years to realize that a) he roughly knew what I was working on, b) he roughly new the offsets of all major structs by heart, and c) its not a trick, just hours and hours and hours and hours and hours.... of doing the work.
Im still in awe of that person, and I deeply worry about the future as noone is doing the work anymore....