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Ask HN: Has anyone here worked on the Windows kernel?

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Re: Ask HN: Has anyone here worked on the Windows kernel?

#61

Post by hyperrail »

Arainach wrote: post #55
ace2358 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s probably true, but sometimes you have to go one level deeper right? What happens when your debugger has crashed?

In 8 years on the Windows team I can't recall the debugger ever crashing. If it does, you open the debugger again and reconnect to the target machine.

Heh, I wish that had ever been the case for me. Sometimes it feels like WinDbg freezes every other command. Plus, getting it to reconnect to a kd after it freezes and I kill it was such an exercise in frustration that if the target machine were my own repro box instead of a stress break remote, I would have just hard-reset the machine or (if it were a VM) restored it from snapshot.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone here worked on the Windows kernel?

#63

Post by retcon »

notJim wrote: post #30
greggsy wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You basically described any workplace in a large company. Organisations are systems made of loosely interconnected and dependent systems, made up of people. The complexity of business norms, personality and cultural differences, and unrealistic expectations around business processes can be difficult to reign in inside a global company. Some workplaces have worked out a sweet spot, balancing people, HR, tools, culture…

I really disagree with this idea, we shouldn't normalize every workplace being full of back-stabbers and retaliatory jerk managers. Nor is horrible red tape a given, although some bureaucracy is of course required. None of this has been my experience at fairly large, well-known companies, although I'm definitely aware of cases where it has happened to friends.

Is enabling the same as normalization? Surely normalization is acceptance into culture whereas even in dysfunctional organizations the individual actors all think that they're solving problems and not taking any shit.

The pity is often how the most qualified talent for resolving poor behaviour is so often subordinated into slopping out the pigsty. There needs to be a foundational next step.

Edit: since Fairchild we've been scared of merely assembling raw talent under a thin layer of management capabilities and from this is developed the pseudo matrix management system that e.g. Microsoft operates.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone here worked on the Windows kernel?

#64

Post by py_or_dy »

I'm pretty burned out too with my work (mostly web dev stuff). I've been meaning to get "AWS certified" or learn Kubernetes, but like you, it all seems so crazy to me. I used to love old school "linux administration", but this new wave of tech gives me no interest.

Curious how you get an offer such as this? I've thought about changing job roles, but I really suck at leet coding so I've never really bothered. I figured that as a 40 year old male, no one would hire me for a role unless I was already experienced. Is that not the case?

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone here worked on the Windows kernel?

#65

Post by amluto »

ccrush wrote: post #26
KerrAvon wrote: post #13

If MS or any FAANG wants to hire you for a kernel dev position, go for it; they clearly see a lot of potential in you that maybe you don't see yourself. I want to point out a couple of things that you should be prepared for: > 2. Debugging exclusively via metrics and logs, since I can't just attach a debugger to a running server. You often can't do this in kernel/OS development work either. Serial printf logging is o…

Can you no longer use windbg to attach to a running kernel on a remote box, and debug the remote box from your development machine? I believe that's how kernel debugging is generally done.

(I’m a Linux kernel dev)

Tools like windbg probably work great until you are debugging the code that runs when windbg tries to take over. Or you’re debugging something sensitive to interrupts and it’s literally impossible to keep up with a tool like windbg. Or you a debugging something that overwrites windbg in memory because you have a corrupt pointer. Or you triple-fault the machine and it reboots with so much prejudice that windbg doesn’t have a chance. Or you’re poking at hardware that the debugger can’t usefully interact with. Etc.

Basically, in the kernel, a lot of the things that a working kernel does to hold your hand aren’t available. So there’s a lot of time spent just thinking or adding logging statements or otherwise using low tech tools. (Or using high tech instrumentation or sanitizers!)

Kernel development is great :)

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone here worked on the Windows kernel?

#68

Post by retcon »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #58
jsolson wrote: post #37

I think I can count the number of kernel changes I've submitted on one hand, but I work on core virtualization that involves a lot of pretending to be hardware and (these days) a lot of poking directly at hardware registers. I would say James Mickens sums things up nicely in "The Night Watch[0]." For example, you mention debugging with logs and metrics -- this snippet came to mind: “Yeah, that sounds bad. Have you ch…

As an aside: James Mickens is a treasure. If anybody reading this hasn't read any of his articles or watched any of his talks before stop now and do it. You won't be sorry. https://mickens.seas.harvard.edu/wisdom-james-mickens

Reading this man's homepage he comes across as a insufferable egotist. I couldn't find any trace of didactic value among the self aggrandizing rhetoric not possible to convey with infinitely greater humility and persuasion as well as concision.

Edit: reference source decades of being quite intolerable myself. Takes one to know one. And by my experience incredible good fortune and more decades to repent.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone here worked on the Windows kernel?

#70

Post by Joe_Boogz »

I work at MSFT on windows kernel drivers - not the kernel directly though. I’d say go for it. Knowing how to program in kernel mode is a lucrative skill set. There aren’t enough people that know how to do it.

In my experience the kernel devs are the best of the best developers. But know that working on the windows kernel will be complicated and require a lot of domain knowledge. Expect to learn about it for _years_ to come.

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