A proposal for code explanation sessions

[Rocky Hotas <rockyhotas%firemail.cc@localhost>]

Hello!

During this year's NetBSD Annual General Meeting on IRC (May 22nd),
several participants suggested the activation of some code tutorial
sessions performed by the developers.

NetBSD sourcecode is in fact still a mysterious place for the new
users, or just for those who read it for the first time. According
to the chat, it would be great if some developer could show how they 
work on the sourcecode, for example with a live session, with any
mean: a Youtube live, or even just an IRC live session.

This arouse several difficulties: not only as regards the lack of
time, but also the difficulties involved in understanding what a
developer is doing (some automated operations, with obvious meaning
for a skilled developer, are meaningless for someone else).

I would like to re-open this discussion and, in particular, I would
like to suggest something maybe simpler. Instead of explaining why
some portion of code is being updated and how, it would be very
useful to show and explain the code just as it is. For example, a
volunteer developer could take an important, well known sourcecode
file, and explain it line by line; as a starting trivial file,
something like src/bin/hostname/hostname.c can be considered, then
moving to something more complicated like src/sbin/init/init.c.

While I'm sure it's not possible to actually explain every line,
the principles used to write the code "that way", to place that
function in that point, to call that function with those argument
values, could be shown.

I believe that some gentle introduction to kernel code would be
extremely useful to the whole community, giving anyone more means
to craft the code by himself, to improve it, to learn and eventually
(why not?) to become a developer. It would be a huge enhancement
for an "open-source" community, because the code would not only be
available, but also comprehensible.

What do you think about it? Would some developer be available for
this?

Bye!

Rocky