linux-kernel - Re: somebody dropped a (warning) bomb

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Message-ID: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0702151059090.20368@woody.linux-foundation.org>
Date:	Thu, 15 Feb 2007 11:02:32 -0800 (PST)
From:	Linus Torvalds <torvalds@...ux-foundation.org>
To:	Sergei Organov <osv@...ad.com>
cc:	Pekka Enberg <penberg@...helsinki.fi>,
	J.A. MagallÃÃÃÃÃÂ³n 
	<jamagallon@....com>, Jan Engelhardt <jengelh@...ux01.gwdg.de>,
	Jeff Garzik <jeff@...zik.org>,
	Linux Kernel Mailing List <linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org>,
	Andrew Morton <akpm@...ux-foundation.org>
Subject: Re: somebody dropped a (warning) bomb

On Thu, 15 Feb 2007, Sergei Organov wrote:
> 
> I agree that if the warning has no true positives, it sucks. The problem
> is that somehow I doubt it has none. And the reasons for the doubt are:

Why do you harp on "no true positives"?

That's a pointless thing. You can make *any* warning have "true 
positives". My personal favorite is the unconditional warning:

	warning: user is an idiot

and I _guarantee_ you that it has a lot of true positives.

It's the "no false negatives" angle you should look at.

THAT is what matters. The reason we don't see a lot of warnings about 
idiot users is not that people don't do stupid things, but that 
*sometimes* they actually don't do something stupid.

Yeah, I know, it's far-fetched, but still.

In other words, you're barking up *exactly* the wrong tree. You're looking 
at it the wrong way around.

Think of it this way: in science, a theory is proven to be bad by a single 
undeniable fact just showing that it's wrong.

The same is largely true of a warning. If the warning sometimes happens 
for code that is perfectly fine, the warning is bad.

		Linus
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