To be fair, while bcachefs isn't a total solo project -- Kent authored 72% of the patches between 6.11 and 6.12, for example, where as out of the 103 patches to ext4 during the same time period, I authored precisely 0%. That's because I subscribe very firmly to the school of thought which says that programming is a team sport, and my job as tech lead is to enable the ext4 contributors to do their best to improve the file system. We have weekly conference calls, and Darrick Wong, senior XFS developer and former XFS maintainer, attends those calls --- and I've been known to help him out on XFS testing issues[1], and Darrick has helped me out with various ext4 test issues, and has even reviewed an ext4 patch or two. We cooperate with each other, and that's a good thing.
[1] https://lore.kernel.org/fstests/[email protected]/T/#u
I'll let other people decide whether they would like to trust their data to someone who is a single hot-shot programmer who might very well be more talented than I on a head-to-head basis --- but I'll give you a hint --- you can "cheat" by bringing a team to bear on a problem. You don't have to do it all by yourself. Of course, in order to do this you need to know how to bring out the best in others, and you have to work together. And being nice to one another on mailing lists doesn't hurt on that score.
[1] https://lore.kernel.org/fstests/[email protected]/T/#u
I'll let other people decide whether they would like to trust their data to someone who is a single hot-shot programmer who might very well be more talented than I on a head-to-head basis --- but I'll give you a hint --- you can "cheat" by bringing a team to bear on a problem. You don't have to do it all by yourself. Of course, in order to do this you need to know how to bring out the best in others, and you have to work together. And being nice to one another on mailing lists doesn't hurt on that score.
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