You can be a kernel hacker! by Julia Evans.
From the post:
When I started Hacker School, I wanted to learn how the Linux kernel works. I’d been using Linux for ten years, but I still didn’t understand very well what my kernel did. While there, I found out that:
- the Linux kernel source code isn’t all totally impossible to understand
- kernel programming is not just for wizards, it can also be for me!
- systems programming is REALLY INTERESTING
- I could write toy kernel modules, for fun!
- and, most surprisingly of all, all of this stuff was useful.
I hadn’t been doing low level programming at all – I’d written a little bit of C in university, and otherwise had been doing web development and machine learning. But it turned out that my newfound operating systems knowledge helped me solve regular programming tasks more easily.
Post by the same name as her presentation at Strange Loop 2014.
Another reason to study the Linux kernel: The closer to the metal your understanding, the more power you have over the results.
That’s true for the Linux kernel, machine learning algorithms, NLP, etc.
You can have a canned result prepared by someone else, which may be good enough, or you can bake something more to your liking.
I first saw this in a tweet by Felienne Hermans.
Update: Video of You can be a kernel hacker!