Ask HN: How to learn proper systems programming?
Years ago I modified the Postgresql source code (8.xx).<p>It's something I was terrified of doing.<p>But once I got in there and started poking around, I realized it was just ordinary plain-vanilla C code. Not C++. Just C code.<p>With my local copy, I started to hack pg_dump to do something special that we wanted at the time. Even after 30 years of coding, I'm not that especially good of a programmer. But I ended up getting our own special version of pg_dump that did what we wanted at the time and it went into production dumping hundreds of gigs of data every day!<p>But what I'm not, is afraid. I'm not afraid to try anything.<p>And that's what it takes to do deep, systems level programming.<p>Don't be afraid.<p>Those bits are just bits. And it's just code... and most of it was not written by wizards. Just ordinary people like you and me. Don't be afraid man.<p>Clone the repo and setup a workable build environment and start tinkering and compiling and running to see what happens.<p>You would be totally shocked to find out what you can actually achieve.<p>Those books will only go so far.