I wrote a micro kernel based OS. Then I wrote a graphics driver to get bit mapped graphics. Then a window manager using that bit mapped graphics driver. Then a bunch of applications using that window manager.
And I never read any one of those books you're listing there other than K&R and the 486 reference manuals. Sure enough I had a fair grasp of the x86 processor architecture before starting this and I'd done a lot of low level 8 bit work. But on the whole I spent more time waiting for it to reboot than I did writing code or reading books and I still managed to do all this in about two years.
This is doable. It's hard, but it is doable, and it is a lot easier now than when I did it. For one you have VMs now which make it a thousand times easier to debug a kernel. No more need to use a dos-extender to bootstrap your fledgling kernel code and so on.
This guy is way out of his depth, that's for sure. But what is also for sure is that he's going to learn quickly and seems on the right road for that (acknowledging what he doesn't know yet).
Don't tell other people what they can't do. Just wait and see, they just might surprise you. You'd have been talking to Linus like that just the same. And you would have been right about him being out of his depth, and you would have been wrong about him not being able to achieve his goal in the longer term.
Maybe this guy will get discouraged, maybe he won't. But no need to kill his enthusiasm with a negative attitude. If you're so smart, why not give him a hand, point him in the right direction on the concrete questions he's asking rather than to literally throw the book (or in this case a whole library) at him and tell him he's clueless.
He probably already knows that anyway, but at least he's willing to learn.
And I never read any one of those books you're listing there other than K&R and the 486 reference manuals. Sure enough I had a fair grasp of the x86 processor architecture before starting this and I'd done a lot of low level 8 bit work. But on the whole I spent more time waiting for it to reboot than I did writing code or reading books and I still managed to do all this in about two years.
This is doable. It's hard, but it is doable, and it is a lot easier now than when I did it. For one you have VMs now which make it a thousand times easier to debug a kernel. No more need to use a dos-extender to bootstrap your fledgling kernel code and so on.
This guy is way out of his depth, that's for sure. But what is also for sure is that he's going to learn quickly and seems on the right road for that (acknowledging what he doesn't know yet).
Don't tell other people what they can't do. Just wait and see, they just might surprise you. You'd have been talking to Linus like that just the same. And you would have been right about him being out of his depth, and you would have been wrong about him not being able to achieve his goal in the longer term.
Maybe this guy will get discouraged, maybe he won't. But no need to kill his enthusiasm with a negative attitude. If you're so smart, why not give him a hand, point him in the right direction on the concrete questions he's asking rather than to literally throw the book (or in this case a whole library) at him and tell him he's clueless.
He probably already knows that anyway, but at least he's willing to learn.