Don Burn wrote:
Matt,
When you first asked the question, I was annoyed because I thought it
would lead to people insisting “here are the N things all driver writers
should know”.
I kinda sensed that. I myself was worried it would turn into the C
vs C++ debate as I expressed in
my first post. Anyhow, even though you were annoyed with it, thanks for
participating.
Now as the discussion is winding down, I wanted to thank you
for bringing it up, since I believe the thread has shown clearly what is my
contention “there is no set of questions that all driver writers independant
of the class of drivers should know”.
From the various post received, I feel I gained a rather clear ‘in
site’ into how many top devs in this world think
regarding ‘junior’ devs among other things.
I agree it appears “‘there is no set of questions that all driver
writers’ - should know”, however it
clearly shows the universal idea that all developers (user/kernel)
should be proficient in the obvious:
- their debugger or debugging tool of choice (VS, Windbg, Dbgview, etc).
- Looking up docs and GOOGLE (among other sources of info)
I kinda thing these are the most important skills; knowing what your
code is doing and why (google it
if you can’t figure it out)
Maybe Peter can pontificate on this using some of the thread to show
that even simple things like “how to use WinDBG” are not appropriate.
That would be interesting, hearing the founder of the top driver shop in
the world comment on
his thoughts on filling junior positions. (and no, that wasn’t a ‘suck
up’ statement, I’m unaware
of any other window driver dev company like OSR).
I
still encounter way to many people who think there should be a first level
qualification process before you talk to someone for a driver position.
Like what??? Asking if they have a certification… lol… Sorry, but
someone else earlier mentioned the HR
gurus.
I understand your point; just as a side note it’s a hundred times worse
with user land positions.
While experience is a decent qualifier, trying to generalize between driver
classes is a bad idea, and as this thread has shown Microsoft is making it
less likely with efforts such as UMDF that there is a common knowledge base
that driver writers need.
True, I was hoping to maximize responses by making it as general as
possible. In doing so I read
the responses of multiple experts utilizing a range of technologies.
Matt