Can anyone defend Linus' version as better communication than Eisenberg's?
I just submitted a sibling comment where I did:
Abuse is indefensible
111–120 of 221 posts
Re: Abuse is indefensible
#112From 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.
Brendan Eich stepping down as Mozilla's CEO was not due to speech: >His appointment sparked controversy over a $1,000 political donation Eich had made in 2008 to the successful campaign for California Proposition 8, which sought to establish that, "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California."
While I don't agree with his personal donation or Citizen's United, that case held that political donation is a form of protected speech[0].
So in a very literal way, he was pushed out due to the manner in which he chose to speak.
0: http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/citizens-united-v...
Re: Abuse is indefensible
#113Linus' version is intimidating. But that's why it is very effective. Case in point, we people on hacker news would have never even read his rant if the language was mild. So in some way it sticks better. You really DO NOT WANT to step on his toes again (and everyone else reading it, too), so in the end Linus' wins. Also, it's sad, but after so many years on the internet I don't consider his language to be abusive. It…
> You really DO NOT WANT to step on his toes again (and everyone else reading it, too), so in the end Linus' wins. And yet it keeps happening, frequent enough that it's something everyone knows about. If anything, he's not optimizing his own responses based on actual performance. He's doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. And he's not even being efficient with it. And, well, pretty…
> He's doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. And he's not even being efficient with it.
It seems his results are just fine, why would he expect different results? I say this supported by the slightly arguable premise that the Linux kernel is a good example of a big success in software development.
Re: Abuse is indefensible
#114Yes, it's harsh, but it gets the point across in a very memorable way.
He knows very well how people perceive it, but code quality and his reputation as a developer are more important to him than the reputation he gets from his rants.
Re: Abuse is indefensible
#115I really don't like abuse in technical discussions, but this blog post is so poorly argued that I find myself siding 100% with Linus.
The issue Linus is addressing is not merely the merits of those two lines of code, but of the culture and thinking that led to in being included.
Here is the key message that has been completely omitted by the rewritten polite version: In fact, I want to make it clear to everybody* that code like this is completely unacceptable. Anybody who thinks that code like this is "safe" and "secure" because it uses fancy overflow detection functions is so far out to lunch that it's not even funny.*
Linus doesn't just want those two lines fixed. He wants to make clear to every developer who thinks that this was good code, that this is in fact bad code. He wants to set an example for those who might have been unsure about speaking up and show that it is okay to strongly attack bad practices. He makes a point about "masturbation", which specifically means writing code that is satisfying and clever, but doesn't accomplish anything.
There probably is a less coarse and more sensitive way to accomplish this, but this blog post has completely missed the point of the argument Linus is making.
Re: Abuse is indefensible
#116I am troubled by this obsession that these activists have with Torvalds. Could there be anything more minor than these complaints about tone? What harm does the existence of one software project which permits 'rants' do to others? Do those who claim to desire civility not understand that by hounding and inundating him and the community in general with the same talking points ad infinitum, they are themselves being un…
I'm not sure ESR is the best unbiased source on feminist groups. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Eric_S._Raymond#i_am_slowly_goi... Rational Wiki certainly has its own biases, but they call out a lot of problematic items with links right back to the blog posts if you care to verify.
I wasn't aware of that crankery, however, that does not discredit these straightforward allegations (argumentum ad hominem). I should add that this particular tactic is already being practiced on the bigwigs in the atheist community, so it's far from implausible.
Re: Abuse is indefensible
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure ESR is the best unbiased source on feminist groups. http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Eric_S._Raymond#i_am_slowly_goi... Rational Wiki certainly has its own biases, but they call out a lot of problematic items with links right back to the blog posts if you care to verify.
I wasn't aware of that crankery, however, that does not discredit these straightforward allegations (argumentum ad hominem). I should add that this particular tactic is already being practiced on the bigwigs in the atheist community, so it's far from implausible.
"A source I won't name says people I don't like are out to get me" from a known crank is not a "straightforward allegation".
Re: Abuse is indefensible
#118As I understand it, the Linux codebase has hundreds of regular contributors and Torvalds basically spends his entire time reviewing patches to an operating system kernel that is used in countless mission-critical scenarios across the world. The implications of introducing a bug or security exploit to an OS kernel could be as severe as loss of life.
With that in mind, I find myself wondering every time I read a report like this: the instrument may be blunt and the punishment humiliating, but is it really unnecessary?
If just one more contributor submits a similar patch, the chances of such an error making it through code review is doubled. If you don't have a strong handle on what is being submitted you will quickly lose control.
The purpose of a rant like that is not to provide feedback to a contributor that he made a mistake, it's to send a clear message to the wider community that code of that kind must not ever be submitted in the first place. It's a first line of defence against bad code. And to that end, I'd say it's quite effective.
I've never written a line of kernel code in my life, and I probably never will. But if I choose to make a contribution to Linux, even a few years from now, I will remember what practices to avoid through my memories of this and previous rants.
Re: Abuse is indefensible
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
>pull that shit Right, in fact, if I were the developer who wrote that shit, I would probably think twice about doing any work on the code. Not because I was insulted but because I would be scared. I don't know about this specific situation and maybe it's political/religious. But maybe the girl/guy just wrote this code because they thought it was the best solution. Being screamed at by an authority like that (even if…
I would argue exactly that, yes. If you don't understand basic things about code clarity and safety, you're not ready. The Linux Kernel doesn't exist to validate your opinion of yourself, but to literally support the world's software infrastructure. Which is more important.
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Re: Abuse is indefensible
#120I 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 think you might be confusing two different things.
Is this the worst Linus rant ever? No. I think its virality is a bit inexplicable too. For a Linus rant, it is unusually focused on the code and not the upbringing of the authors of the code. It's weird that this is the one everyone's glomming onto; Gizmodo even ran a story headlined "you don't need to be a programmer to understand what this rant is about", but as you can see from this thread, even programmers don't understand what this rant is actually about.
But "not the worst Linus rant ever" is not the same thing as "not abusive". This clearly is abusive language, and would not be tolerated in most professional teams, even if the rant was about something more substantial than the relatively insubstantial thing it's about.