Linus : " bad code shit" rant

Linus caught something he didn't like on kernel 4.3 ,enjoy the rant

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Arrogance like that is only going to keep people from submitting code to Linux. he might as well write everything in assembly language if he wants a 1 to 1 ratio of code.

Linus being an honest person who speaks his mind isn't something new. He has been this way since the very beginning, and people still work with him and on Linux. Linus isn't gong to change, and no one (besides SJWs), should want/expect him to change.

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He's honest but there's no need to be a dick as well. I could understand if they get it wrong twice. but the first time is just un-neccessary. he acts like programmers are meant to be perfect. they aren't.

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There is an interesting piece that sheds some light on working on the kernel. The short of it is: Kernel programming is not a learning excursion because it's infrastructure.

Of course no programmer is perfect. Being told that what one does is wrong is important, even the first time. If the matter is really important it is necessary to do it in the open and loud. Getting loud without being wrong is one of the most powerful tools in group leadership. It takes care that the error never will be made again.

As the linked piece says: It is infrastructure and infrastructure will always err on the side of caution. Mechanical Engineering often uses a safety factor of 2 and above. A badly implemented feature in the Kernel is worse than just leaving the Kernel as is.

It's sometimes necessary to do this and publicly shame code, there's an extremely high standard that is required and even expected for kernel code so its done as both a) Linus being Linus b) Making an example out of a person or their code so repeat mistakes, bad code, bad practice, etc happen less if he rants and gets people thinking twice about what they're doing.

He's not being arrogant, consider who he is and how much of an expert on the matter he is; if the creator of the kernel itself is telling you you're doing something shit its probably shit. Hes an honest person too, his goal isn't to be liked and to dance around issues hes going to be straight up and get the job done which is the best way to do it.

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Maybe he should take a professional communication course.

Also, people in this thread defending him: lol.

First, it's open-source, not a company. Different animal.
Second I find it hilarious that people are calling him "arrogant" or "a dick" when not only is everything he said true but he never attacked anybody personally or even said anything about a person.
He doesn't need defending.
And if the only solid complaint you can level against someone is that they are too aggressive about being right, maybe you should just learn to admit when you are wrong and make the relevant adjustments.

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Linus being honest person, speaking his mind is not new... He is extremely honest with his preferences and biases... However, he never admits having any... But he is still arrogant piece of crap...
Discussing Linuses arrogance is pointless... While he have 10 billion followers he will never learn. And he have more and more followers... So i guess being an ass is a guarantee for success...

This is normal for Linus Torvalds. He rips people apart for stuff he doesn't like.

If only I could get away with that (sometimes). I think I'd end up in HR :p

You can actually tag me in a comment instead of referring to me as 'People'. And second, when you become successful as someone like Linus Torvalds, arrogance always starts to develop in you. which is a horrible personality trait to have. he acts like people won't just turn around and stop helping him. he open-sourced his product. he doesn't own it.. someone can just take his code and actually work with the community instead of working with him. and third, there's a difference between being a arrogant dick and being objective. the amount of un-neccessary language in his comments is absurd. in the long run does it matter? probably not, but at the same time you can be grateful that people are even bothering to help you make the kernel better. just because you do something differently to get the same output doesn't make you wrong. and according to this, Linus doesn't seem to understand that.

I think it's less about arrogance and more about being passionate about a project he started.

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Wasn't marginalizing you or talking behind ur back. You are not the only one saying it and quotes were of you cuz that's what i read right before i typed.

Yeah there is a difference, as in they are completely unrelated. Calling him arrogant over this is asserting that he is holding himself as better or above you or others. Which I guess is an understandable misinterpretation of the fact that he is holding the product to a higher standard than the code being addressed. But it's immature, misguided and again, a misinterpretation. Or worse, intellectually dishonest use of someones passion for a project that they have poured huge amounts of themselves into to prop up personal attacks.

And since the effect of attitudes and communication in a working environment keeps getting brought up: An inability to take criticism and interpreting it as personal attack has ruined more careers and projects than any abrasive language. In addition to being utterly childish. Try being an adult, getting over whatever problems you have with the tone of the message and dealing with the content.
If you have problems with Linus on a personal level, well that's on you. I personally would never work for the guy but he knows his stuff and I cannot fault his "rant" in the kernel collaborative efforts because while you seem to be denying it with your "same output" sentence the issue being addressed caused faults and has the potential to propagate into a cough shitstorm.

Responding that someone is an asshole or some such because of salty language to being informed that something is wrong and unacceptable in future shows that you care more about social standing and "face" than the project (even if you aren't involved) And since the message is only pertaining to further development of said project, not calling out people by name or insulting anyone, such complaints are utterly irrelevant.

Your welcome to your opinion of Linus, but the subject of this thread is neither adequate support of your assertion of his arrogance nor should it be treated as an invitation for you to beat that still-borne horse.

As Linus himself once said :

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I have seen his posts on other forums where he can be very self-depreciating.
He may be rude and of base but what about the constant upgrade cycle where you need to spend x amout of dollars each year to keep up with bloatware and bad code.
Also Linux was born on the newsgroups. When I first tried slackware in the 90's it was a pain but I was amazed how fast it was. Newsgroups were no place for pussies. I wounder if the Linus/Andy Tannenbaum flame war was ever achived. They are friends to this day as far as I know but they did go after each other. I am no programmer but I learn more from two geniuses having a good old fashioned flame war then a room full of polite groupthink.

Knowing the number of rubbish pull requests and patches that are submitted to the kernel on a regular basis Linus attitude doesn't surprise me at all. Linus is basically the St. Peter of Linux land and it pays off in the long term, and linux is a VERY long term project. If you want to know what linux would be like without his high standards just open any new just started github project and check what sorts of dependencies and strange build tools you require to build from source! There is no just running make menuconfig.
The Kernel code is so clean, because it simply HAS TO BE, things will get quite un-readably/un-runnably buggy quite soon otherwise.

People really need to learn how to write clean code that will work for nearly everything vs Code that works just for them. The same is true for git commits and patches. Developers really need to learn how to properly format and author a git change. You can read the reasoning from Linus for this in one of his famous github posts. I had to enforce a similar policy at my previous job where Git commit quality where just horrible and the programmers too lazy to care, because management didn't care and or know about it. Afterwards I could hear the wheels on their Office chairs clatter when someone was about to commit some code.

If you think he is harsh don't look at the NetBSD mailing list....

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Did anyone actually read the thread?

It was over convoluted code