If US-Americans could just for a moment stop trying to impose their "culture" on everyone else, that would be nice.
Oh, right, they can't.
Abuse is indefensible
41–50 of 221 posts
Re: Abuse is indefensible
#42I thought that finally I can see example of Linus being abusive. This was not it. Linus was attacking the work and ideas and cursing them. He was not attacking the person who wrote the code. Cursing is not abusive by itself. Cursing is emotional emphasis. I would not want to work in a environment where strong emotional language used to criticize your work is considered abusive. If conflict over ideas and work does no…
"He was not attacking the person who wrote the code."
Linus: "...anybody who thinks that the above is [acceptable] is just incompetent and out to lunch."
That's a direct attack on the coder (and anyone else who thought the code was acceptable.) The remainder of the rant is written in such as way as to castigate the coder indirectly by insulting the work. If that wasn't the intent, such emotional and abusive language is completely unnecessary to get the point across.
I would not want to work in an environment where strong emotional language used to criticize employees "work" is considered acceptable.
Re: Abuse is indefensible
#43I thought that finally I can see example of Linus being abusive. This was not it. Linus was attacking the work and ideas and cursing them. He was not attacking the person who wrote the code. Cursing is not abusive by itself. Cursing is emotional emphasis. I would not want to work in a environment where strong emotional language used to criticize your work is considered abusive. If conflict over ideas and work does no…
I would not want to work in an environment where strong emotional language used to criticize your work is not considered abusive. It's childish and counterproductive. I'm not your enemy, I'm your ally --- making me hate you isn't going to make me want to work with you. If I'm wrong, say so, but do it politely.
I work with someone who has an amazing ability to tell people they're wrong and make them feel good about themselves. You come out of gruelling code reviews feeling hyped and enthusiastic about refactoring your code. It's a skill I'm not very good at and one I want to learn. That's professionalism in action.
Re: Abuse is indefensible
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
I had the same feeling about the last bit of the article. Drama for no reason. I would be glad if the tech community focused more on tech than on shitstorms. Some people are just too sensitive. If you don't like how Linus behaves, then don't deal with him. Noone forces you. But why post an article on your blog which is associated with Mozilla including a gist of collected swear words? At least Linus didn't engage in…
There's no reason that anyone would need to be emotionally strong enough that in a company with adults in which the focus is working together on technology, they should expect to get sworn at a few times as an acceptable interaction with their peers.
In normal interactions actually no - there are a few very rare situations where it might be appropriate to use expletives for emphasis.
Day to day project work is not one of those.
Re: Abuse is indefensible
#45To be honest, Linus' rants is making a better point for me. I really feel his pain with overflow_usub, and i feel nothing when reading rewritten version.
Why on earth do I need to "feel his pain" rather than just understand the issues at hand?
You don't. The man who wrote that code does.
And judging by his response, i'd say he did - http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1510.3/02919.html
Re: Abuse is indefensible
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Nobody will try to pull that shit again for quite some time. Watch me! (not really, but if I wanted to troll Linus, rants like that would serve as encouragement) Also using the compiler builtins is the most secure, most readable, least error-prone and fastest way of implementing overflow checks.
Linus's rant is literally entirely based only on why that is wrong.
He makes a lot of claims without backing any of them up.
Re: Abuse is indefensible
#47"I am certain the reaction to this text would be entirely different were it written by a woman."
Do we really need this garbage at the end of this post? How is it f-ing relevant? Linus' post was despicable in itself, everybody sees that except a few zealots. People are condemning it on this very thread, why do we need to throw this hypothetical gender bias BS?
The rant was written by a man, it is needlessly rude and aggressive, and we all point it out. Period.
A much more relevant thing to say would have been "I am certain the reaction to this text would be entirely different were it written by the guy who created Linux."
Re: Abuse is indefensible
#48When I was 17, I was super enthusiastic about Linux. I read a bunch of stuff about kernel development. Linus' attitude was very well known and presented as an amusing thing. Glorified even. I remember reading some of his emails with a great deal of schadenfreude. Now I'm really glad I never pursued that. I work in a field where all the leading figures are absurdly nice and respectful. Reading Linus' rant makes me app…
I think this is the underlying point. It's difficult to imagine that Linus's style of criticising attracts people to the industry, or indeed has any benefits at all. Conversely, it clearly puts off a lot of talented people from getting involved in Linux, and people use his style as justification for their own aggression.
Outside of the open source movement, managers using this kind of language would be reprimanded and even fired, as it could make employees feel stressed and suffering from constructive dismissal.
There is simply no need for being rude, or any kind of aggression in the workplace, and we should consider open source contributors as being in the workplace. Full stop.
Re: Abuse is indefensible
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
They... should be offended? Because it was a bad idea that ruins the Linux Kernel. Kernel development isn't for everyone.
Can you (the person who wrote that this code would "ruin" the Linux kernel) explain in as much detail as you can how it would have ruined the Linux kernel? I'm curious about how much people take what Linus says at face value.
Code being safe or unsafe is a pretty objective metric of quality, methinks.
Re: Abuse is indefensible
#50From the team that hounded out Brendan Eich... May I quote the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 19: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression: this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
What's your point in posting that quote? Sure, Linus and Eich can say what they want, and others can say what they want about that.