Interview With Jordan Hubbard

Jeremy Andrews writes: "KernelTrap has interviewed kernel hacker and guru Jordan Hubbard, one of the creators of FreeBSD and currently a manager of Apple's Darwin project. With just a high school education, Jordan has offered some impressive contributions to the world of computing. In this interview, Jordan talks about his current involvement with Darwin, as well as his past efforts with FreeBSD and 386BSD. He also reflects on his recent decision to step down from the core FreeBSD team."

How Offensive

[Outland Traveller]

"With just a high school education..."

What a ridiculous thing to say. Did Jordan Hubbard's education stop after highschool? Was he locked down to whatever knowledge he had gleaned up until that point, never to accomplish any greater intellectual achievements? Did he just sit back and decide to learn nothing? When I was in college most CS programs were far behind industry practices. You might learn plenty of important things in college at that time, but nothing about software engineering that a determined enthusiast could not learn simply by reading Dr. Dobbs.

It's particularly disheartening to read this on a site like Slashdot, where people should know that technology moves so fast that they only way to succeed in the field is to have a large enough intellectual talent to teach oneself. The people that can do this should be respected for their objective accomplishments and not, as the poster implies, be patronized for overcoming a disability. There is more than one road to knowledge.

I'm not in any way diminishing the accomplishments of college graduates, but the way that sentence was written struck me as a bit off.

Re:How Offensive

[blues5150]

Actually that whole paragraph seems to have been copied varbatim from the kernel trap intro.

Re:How Offensive

[medcalf]

Never confuse your schooling with your education. - Mark Twain

Re:How Offensive

[Helmholtz Coil]

I agree with the thrust of this comment, although it does look like the post did copy and paste it over straight from the article. At any rate, it's not just in technology but (I think) intellectual pursuits in general. I've worked with brilliant folks without even a high school diploma, and similarly I've worked with PhD's as smart as a bag of wet nickels. However many pieces of paper a person has or hasn't collected over the years isn't always a good measure of the person.

Back to the topic at hand, as somebody who recently started using FreeBSD for his desktop machine I'd like to thank Jordan for all his hard work down the years. Good interview.

Re:How Offensive

[dolmant_php]

Did you even read the interview? Here I quote Jordan Hubbard from the interview:
"I'm 39 years old and have just a high school education..."
Jordan said it, not Jeremy Andrews.

Re:How Offensive

[Outland Traveller]

No, I admit I had not yet read the article before posting. Usually I do, but there wasn't anything to suggest that the words the submitter used were not his own. Oh well. I think the comment is still valid because of the way the submission will be perceived.

Dedication

[Strog]

I sometimes think that a lot of the best examples of how to solve these problems are in our own past, the 60's and 70's being something of a golden age for OS research, and we just need to go back and study some of those examples and figure out how to bring them up to date and complete that "last 10%" they never managed (because it would have taken 90% of the time, as the adage goes).

I'm glad he stuck it out and pushed through on that last 10% for us to enjoy. You don't see as much of that going on but it is nice to see that some people still push through the glamour to finish a project. He could have just said forget it and quit when things went bad with 386BSD.

Just look at Freshmeat/Sourceforge/parts unknown for all the projects that start but lose steam and stop. My hats off to all of you code monkeys out there keeping on and producing. I'll see if I can do anything to help because I know I couldn't complete my own project.

Slightly off topic..

[BalkanBoy]

Not sure why they make a reference to his education - as if the vocational type of schooling you get as an undergraduate in this country has any merit whatsoever. The only type of school worth pursuing in the good ol' US of A is graduate school. It is an entirely different ball game, and you best know what you are doing or else...

I've known people with Masters degrees in computer science who still weren't sure of the differences between a char* and a char[] in C... if that is of any consolation to those who think they've missed out a lot by not going to school. School has its purpose - however, it is entirely 100% up to the individual whether he comes out of it with more or less knowledge and aptitude to do what he's supposed to ...

I didn't know the difference either

[Sits]

I had to look at C Class - Arrays, String Constants and Pointers [wisc.edu] to learn all the differences (I only got 1 out of the 4).

Security

[mlinksva]

We've pretty much scaled all the smaller and more well-known mountains like "portability" and

"security" and are now left with some of the taller and more foreboding peaks, like "clustering", "distributed filesystems" and "ubiquitous computing".

Good thing security is in quotes. Not a small mountain, nor has it been scaled. See the Saving the UNIX API [eros-os.org] thread from a few months ago on the cap-talk mailing list.

Re:Security

[edhall]

That's pretty much a non sequitur; capability-based schemes can be a component (and a particularly byzantine one, in my opinion) of a security system. But they aren't necessary for security. They are just a way of implementing specific security policies -- and you can make the latter mountain as high as you want. That doesn't have anything to do with FreeBSD's goals, however, just as extreme "portability" is not a FreeBSD goal. What the EROS folks do is their own business.

As a footnote, I think the idea of trying to preserve the Unix API in the face of such a radically un-Unix-like security sceheme is a bit silly.

-Ed

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Education...

[jkh]

I think this has to be taken somewhat out of context to be offended by it at all. I by no means intended to imply that it was exceptional for a high school graduate without the benefit of a college education to excell at something like software engineering, and some of the best software people I know never went beyond a high school "education" in the formal sense of the word. I also would never say or even imply that a university education was unnecessary or a waste of time. In fact, I can think of few things more fun than being able to spend 4-6 years in the pursuit of academic research or learning the kinds of esoteric things that one's career would never expose one to, like oceanography or astronomy in my particular case. I just never had the luxury of being able to do that, and a luxury it is when you have to take care of yourself from an early age (I left home at 15) so I hope those folks who are in college, especially those who's parents are footing the bill, fully appreciate the blessings they have! Now that I can afford it, it's a bit late...

Re:Education...

[CoolVibe]

Damn, where are my mod points when I need 'em :)

You're not the only one that thrives without having "the right papers". Thank $DEITY that there are some people that look beyond the pedigree, but look at real skill sets.

If programming is something that comes naturally to one, and if a person actually loves to do it as well (and forgo simple needs like eating, sleeping, and drinking for extended periods of while whilst one is in the 'zone') then one should seriously pursue such a thing and exploit that to the fullest :) Of couse you should not forget to have a life. Jordan seems to have that all in check pretty well, although he's still a busy man.

Sometimes I wish I had the time management skills of some people....