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Linus Torvalds: Successful projects are 99% perspiration and 1% innovation

theregister.co.uk

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Re: Linus Torvalds: Successful projects are 99% perspiration and 1% innovation

#51

Post by anjc »

bad_user wrote: post #48
anjc wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice romantic view but the fact is that 95% of people in the western world can't afford society's perceptions of "basic needs". I'd wager that most people you hear talking about innovation, outside of Websummit and so on, are living hand-to-mouth and very much need to sell their ideas.

Those people you're talking about should move outside of Silicon Valley. There's a whole world out there where you can live quite a comfortable lifestyle for a half or even a third of your average SV monthly income. Seriously, money is a matter of hygiene and if you're feeling the need for more, it's time to make a serious change, like to change city or profession, because startups are a lottery.

Well your pay is going to decline in accordance with the cost of living. I'm mainly talking about salaried jobs here, I don't know how profitable the average startup is (I'm guessing 'not very')

Re: Linus Torvalds: Successful projects are 99% perspiration and 1% innovation

#52

Post by DigitalJack »

douche wrote: post #3

Hear hear! Linus really is the patron saint of grumpy, cynical engineers. There's nothing more frustrating than listening to the bullshit artist spin castles made out of air, knowing that you're the poor son-of-a-gun that's going to have to do the hard work to make it actually happen, and get blamed when reality intrudes on the grand vision. Also closes with a great quote. Code is easy, it's either right or it's wron…

"Also closes with a great quote. Code is easy, it's either right or it's wrong. People are the sticky wicket"

When I read that I got the feeling that people were thinking to themselves "it either executes or has an error," but that is certainly not the case when Linus deems code right or wrong. Obviously not executing is an automatic disqualification.

Two patches can correctly execute and achieve the same goal, and yet one will be deemed "brain dead" and "moronic" and the other be deemed "right," solely on the subjective whims of Linus. Totally his prerogative, and I have no issue with it.

But don't think for a minute that code is "black and white."

Re: Linus Torvalds: Successful projects are 99% perspiration and 1% innovation

#53

Post by oumua_don17 »

frederikvs wrote: post #39

It's funny how he says "Don't do this big 'think different'... screw that", apparently without realising that Apple did exactly what he's talking about. Almost all of Apple's big innovations were stolen from other places, and then they shut up, and got to work : making it work properly, making it user friendly, making it sexy, and then selling it. Apple's slogan may have been "think different", and they have the imag…

Picasso said "Good artists copy, great artists steal" which is quoted again by Steve Jobs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU

Even to do something like a simple library and to publish it professionally will need `high quality`: code, tests, documentation (user/developer/guides), examples at a minimum. Basically the long tail of polishing is that 80% perspiration, 19% perspiration is to get to the stage (MVP may be) where you get on to polish it and that 1% innovation is when you kick your backside to get going!

Re: Linus Torvalds: Successful projects are 99% perspiration and 1% innovation

#54

Post by bananarepdev »

I deeply respect and admire Torvalds, but in the corporate world, the hypey/trendy thing helps tech people getting important changes approved by upper management, at least in my experience. I work in a tech company whose culture is primarily driven to productivity (read: getting business features delivered using the established stack and tools, as quick as possible). There is certainly an upside to it, but it produced a mindset in wich, in the face of a new problem, developers didn't even think of the possibility of bringing another tool to the toolbox. I mean seriously, to the extent of building their own xml parsers. Only recently we have been able to assemble an architecture team (i know, i hate the concept) to actually find adequate solutions to the bigger issues, and the hype is sometimes a powerful enabler to push things forward.

Re: Linus Torvalds: Successful projects are 99% perspiration and 1% innovation

#55

Post by js8 »

supremesaboteur wrote: post #50
anjc wrote: post #7

Someone who should be a multi billionaire says to ignore marketing and sales and just work. Edit: I'm not saying that he WANTS to be a multi billionaire, but the fact is that he has attained disproportionately less value than he's created. By rights he should be one of the wealthiest people in tech. He might have 150m but that's peanuts given what he's done. The wealth of the guy who made Instagram dwarfs that. The g…

He is worth $150 million and has an annual salary of $10 million : http://www.therichest.com/celebnetworth/celebrity-business/t... I say he marketed himself well

I doubt both claims are true, especially the one about his annual salary. I would like to see a better source; I googled it, but the only other answer I found was that in 1999, he got some shares from Redhat worth of about $20 million.

Re: Linus Torvalds: Successful projects are 99% perspiration and 1% innovation

#56

Post by tylercubell »

Chris Anderson: So you spoke to me last week about these two guys. Who are they and how do you relate to them?

Linus Torvalds: Well, so this is kind of cliché in technology, the whole Tesla versus Edison, where Tesla is seen as the visionary scientist and crazy idea man. And people love Tesla. I mean, there are people who name their companies after him.

The other person there is Edison, who is actually often vilified for being kind of pedestrian and is — I mean, his most famous quote is, "Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration." And I'm in the Edison camp, even if people don't always like him. Because if you actually compare the two, Tesla has kind of this mind grab these days, but who actually changed the world? Edison may not have been a nice person, he did a lot of things — he was maybe not so intellectual, not so visionary. But I think I'm more of an Edison than a Tesla.

http://www.ted.com/talks/linus_torvalds_the_mind_behind_linu...

Re: Linus Torvalds: Successful projects are 99% perspiration and 1% innovation

#57

Post by Seanny123 »

bananarepdev wrote: post #54

I deeply respect and admire Torvalds, but in the corporate world, the hypey/trendy thing helps tech people getting important changes approved by upper management, at least in my experience. I work in a tech company whose culture is primarily driven to productivity (read: getting business features delivered using the established stack and tools, as quick as possible). There is certainly an upside to it, but it produce…

I never thought of it that way. Thanks for the insight.

Re: Linus Torvalds: Successful projects are 99% perspiration and 1% innovation

#60

Post by ryandrake »

anjc wrote: post #7

Someone who should be a multi billionaire says to ignore marketing and sales and just work. Edit: I'm not saying that he WANTS to be a multi billionaire, but the fact is that he has attained disproportionately less value than he's created. By rights he should be one of the wealthiest people in tech. He might have 150m but that's peanuts given what he's done. The wealth of the guy who made Instagram dwarfs that. The g…

Your good point is getting very unfairly down-voted by disagreers. Sure, he's set for life, but compared to his massive contribution to the industry, Linus seems to have left a lot of money on the table. I know--it's stupid to believe in the just-world, but it grinds my gears that in our world talkers tend to be rewarded orders of magnitude more than doers.
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