261–270 of 408 posts
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For various reasons I would not go back to Java, but that was wonderful, your very old code still worked with newer versions, nothing broke during upgrades (even when behind deprecation one version).
There's a great talk about backwards compatibility in Java by Brian Goetz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y5Pv4yN0b0
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> John Johansen will survive. We really need to stop excusing Linus's behaviour. Just because we may happen to agree with what he is saying doesn't mean we also have to agree with how he is saying it.
I agree with how he's saying it. He's being honest. He's letting you know where he stands and what the rule is, without any kind of hidden message or room for interpretation. The other guy? Not being so honest.
Acting out is actually dishonest and it's mostly about a hidden message. It's a failure to recognize and deal with your won frustrations which you then take out on others, usually when an opportunity presents itself to rationalize your behavior - someone does something you perceive as wrong, so they become a justifiable target for the anger that's already there. What I read in the email's message is, 'I'm out of control, I'm not able or willing to mange my emotions, so you better watch out'. That is a poor management and communication technique.
IMHO, a leader or manager should hold their leadership and management work product to the same standard that they hold their subordinates' technical work product. If they want the highest standards for the kernel code, they need to have the highest standards for their communication and other conduct.
A great challenge of being the boss is that there is nobody to hold you to high standards; you have to do it yourself and that's not something people are good at. As they say: Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Clearly, this message could have been communicated much more effectively - while being truly honest and without hidden messages or room for interpretation - if the communicator chose to make an effort.
Finally, if this form of communication is effective, do others communicate to Linus in this manner? Does he ask them to?
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"At least he tells it like it is" right? Forget that he's an asshole about it. Pretty much the same reason everybody voted for Trump.
Except Linus is technically right, where Trump is normally technically wrong, and an asshole.
Linus is right but his choice of words seems unprofessional bordering on harassment. Almost sounds childish in parts, especially the ALL CAPS screaming he does. Its cool to be passionate but also be civil.
Linus's point of view on overall "professionalism": https://lkml.org/lkml/2013/7/15/547
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I wouldn't call it bullying. He isn't attacking the committer personally or due to anything outside the issue. He isn't hounding the committer. Bluntly telling someone they really screwed up and need to stop denying it isn't bullying. Someone being mean isn't bullying.
Dressing someone down publicly, in a tone based on anger and frustration, is a form of humiliation, and humiliation is a form of bullying.
Especially when it's a personality style combined with the fact it comes from a place of caring deeply about the subject... then the motivation is not just trying to hurt the other person. This is the maturity, the point you learn to see in people.
Clearly Linus is heavily attached to the project and the person he replied to has been pushing an unpopular position for 3 weeks. It didn't come out of nowhere. He's also not new to this game. He's not some new intern, who doesn't know the deal, getting bullied by a CEO.
There has been a big culture trend to treat every small comment as potentially devastatingly hurtful, training kids to be thin skinned, and in my opinion, this highly disincentivizes honesty and will create a lot of inefficiency in business. As it requires a significant time investment to make sure even seemingly harmless statements are not 'hurtful', employing subtlety and skirting around an issue indirectly requires significant cognitive load. In a high volume, high pressure projects like the Linux mailing list this could really add up and generate bad decision making, as people will rather avoid an issue then invest in saying it carefully.
The ROI in that trend is questionable, as you can train people to see beyond the words and look at the person's real motivation and meaning, as it is not a given raw honesty is coming from a place of personal attack.
That said, obviously otherwise real hurtful and mean attacks, without an underlying purpose and genuine motivation other than to hurt the person, should never be tolerated. But sacrificing full honesty and non-heavily filtered emotional opinions in order to never have these personal attacks is just not worth it IMO.
John Johansen will survive. Linus has made it incredibly damn clear what "no user space regressions ever" mean. See f.e the similar rant from 2012: https://lkml.org/lkml/2012/12/23/75 And it is his kernel so it is his rules. John Johansen admitted he messed up ( http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/1710.3/02539.html ) and promised to handle things better in the future so all is well.
> John Johansen will survive. We really need to stop excusing Linus's behaviour. Just because we may happen to agree with what he is saying doesn't mean we also have to agree with how he is saying it.
> trying to shift the regressions somewhere else is bogus SHIT.
That's accurate and specifically points to the unacceptable behavior that needs to be fixed. Linus's "WE DON'T BREAK USERSPACE. EVER." policy is well known, documented, and mentioned frequently. It's reasonable to expect anyone submitting patches to understand this, which makes trying to shift the blame elsewhere... well... "bogus SHIT", regardless of the specific words you use to describe it.
> I will stop pulling apparmor requests until the people involved understand how kernel development is done.
Note that Linus is specifically indicating that this is fixable. Given John Johansen's very commendable apology (see link in grandparent comment), it looks like the message was understood. I suspect this will work out much better in the future.
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edit: Diluting language to make it "nicer" can remove important information. See: "How a plan becomes policy" https://funnyshit.com.au/the_plan.html
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Rich Hickey has a wonderful talk about it. "Spec-ulation" - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyLBGkS5ICk Which I fully agree with, basically there are no major, minor, patch level changes, in reality every change is a possible breaking changes, because we don't control what downstream is doing with our software.
I agree that platforms should stay backward compatible as much as they can. That said, if upstream changes, sometimes you've got to change too. There should be a mechanism for releasing breaking new major versions. And it is this: 1) Release a new version for all your DIRECT dependents. Ideally they should be subscribed to your updates. 2) After they have had ample time to test it, they will release an update for THE…
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"At least he tells it like it is" right? Forget that he's an asshole about it. Pretty much the same reason everybody voted for Trump.
> Pretty much the same reason everybody voted for Trump. "Everybody"? Sanders also said a bunch of things like they are, and he said them politely. Especially factoring in grass roots support, he was more popular than Hillary and would have wiped the floor with Trump. If you allow your media and "leaders" to sweep people like Sanders under the rug, you make people like Trump inevitable. And then you still don't learn…
> Especially factoring in grass roots support, he was more popular than Hillary
If that is objectively true, he should have won the primary. He didn't.
> and would have wiped the floor with Trump.
[CITATION NEEDED]
> If you allow > And then you still don't learn > if you insist
Why are you calling me out? I didn't vote for him. Go project somewhere else.
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"At least he tells it like it is" right? Forget that he's an asshole about it. Pretty much the same reason everybody voted for Trump.
> Pretty much the same reason everybody voted for Trump. "Everybody"? Sanders also said a bunch of things like they are, and he said them politely. Especially factoring in grass roots support, he was more popular than Hillary and would have wiped the floor with Trump. If you allow your media and "leaders" to sweep people like Sanders under the rug, you make people like Trump inevitable. And then you still don't learn…
Unprovable counterfactual (and disputed by actual facts but ho hum.)
> you make people like Trump inevitable.
No, it was nothing to do with Sanders - it was Comey, gerrymandering, gutting the VRA, voter suppression, a complicit media, an electoral system that vastly overpowers the southern states, and astonishing institutionalised countrywide racism and sexism.
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You can have lots of theories about what would or wouldn't make Linux work, but the facts on the ground are that Linux is wildly successful, and Linus behaves as he does. The latter has been an integral part of the former.
Correlation, however, is not causation. You can't say that Linux is wildly successful because Linus behaves as he does.
(if A then B) AND (if not A then not B)