Ask a question to Google engineer

As part of the Google Moderator project, there is a unique opportunity to ask a question to Google engineers themselves. And if the question gets enough pluses to get an answer to it. There is an option to refer specifically to one of the represented developers: Erick Tseng, Jeff Dean, Andrew Morton (number two in Linux), Matt Cutts, Adam Lasnik, Ken Thompson (creator of Unix), Guido van Rossum (creator of Python), Taliver Heath, Colby Ranger, Bill Weihl or to all at once.

Under the cut a few interesting questions and answers.

Is there a chance of Linux becoming a non-monolithic kernel? Monolithic vs. micro / nano / exo kernel?

No need for you
ipod
development team who believes

I am a bit skeptical about the value of microkernels - the
main benefit is the area of ​​fault-tolerance, but for
most of the subsystems
it means
which is effectively a total outage.
')
The bottom line here is "
ameliorated / etc via a microkernel approach? Very few, as far as I know.
- akpm (Andrew Morton), Mountain View, CA

Unix now you could redesign differently?

The easy answer is "I would spell creat with an e."
Remember that Unix was designed 40 years ago. If I could go
back to then
This is my list:

1. much better portability
2. communications better than ethernet and IP.
3. per-process namespaces
4. remote access protocol for filesystems

1,3, and 4 were addressed to some extent in Plan9
- Ken Thompson, Mountain View, CA

How would you sort 1 million 32-bit integers in 2MB of RAM using Python?

I blogged an answer to this question: neopythonic.blogspot.com/2008/10/sorting-million-32-bit-integers-in-2mb.html
- Guido van Rossum, San Francisco Bay Area

Whom do you love more, 'process' or 'thread'?

To me, the process is a concept and thread is an implementation.
I would like to get closer to the implementation.
concept.
- Ken Thompson, Mountain View, CA