A slowgoing development for him, still I sympathize and wish him the best while wondering ironically if personal issues aside what works best. It brings to mind fundamental organizational and management. Is it better to have a "rude" organization? Calling bullshit early and often instead of polite everything is fine stacks of lies since it would be impolite to point out having O(N!) code just can't work for anything…
If someone reviews your code, it will sting when they point out silly mistakes. The insults that the kernel devs fling about just aren't needed to drive home the point.
He reserved the insults for bad design decisions defended by senior committers. It's not like he threw out insults to anybody who ever made a mistake.
As someone familiar with LBT's mailing list rhetoric since the early days, I'm guessing a big part of what's happening here is that LBT hasn't changed the way he communicates but the rest of the world has moved on. And let's face it, the engineering and programming world has gotten a lot more politically correct—I think the main factor driving this is the increasing presence of women in technology. What I mean is tha…
Men and women express aggression in different ways. While they can both be toxic, female aggression is more acceptable at this time.
Linus was forceful at times, but his focus was on the work, not on trying to make people feel bad.
Be critical all you want, but his achievement is amazing.
As someone familiar with LBT's mailing list rhetoric since the early days, I'm guessing a big part of what's happening here is that LBT hasn't changed the way he communicates but the rest of the world has moved on. And let's face it, the engineering and programming world has gotten a lot more politically correct—I think the main factor driving this is the increasing presence of women in technology. What I mean is tha…
> when engineering was almost totally male-dominated, you were expected to be able to bear harsh criticism and vituperation I don’t you intended this, but at first read your comment comes across as sexist. It implies men could take the heat while women can’t. More than being offensive, I find it untrue. Anger-driven management doesn’t scale. Tech has scales, and its heroes of yore much brave a bigger world than they…
I didn't intend that. What I'm implying is that "men taking the heat" and having supposedly thicker skin was the excuse used to justify the lack of empathy and sociopathic behaviour in the culture.
I got the feeling reading that, that Torvald is burned out and frustrated. I know as a kid helping father with a project, sometimes he could be a bit frustrated, maybe I wasn't grabbing the correct size tool, or holding the flashlight in the right place. Maybe Linus feels like that?
He specifically said he wasn't burned out. I agree that he does sound frustrated, though maybe with himself more than with any particular folks.
Yeah maybe I took it from when he said he had been attending a conference for 20 years and was hoping he didn't have to.
He does say he loves the project and wants to continue and compared it to when he developed git
> I am going to take time off and get some assistance on how to understand people’s emotions and respond appropriately. Wow. Torvalds going to a therapy. I seriously couldn't be more impressed about him, because he always seemed too much of a narcissist to me. I understand how difficult it might be to decide to admit that you have a problem at this stage. And for doing that, he has my deep respect. Which kind of brin…
> Which kind of brings me to the other point - would Torvalds be Torvalds if he was treated before?
Some years ago I had to go to therapy for some issues of my own and back then I was afraid that it would fundamentally change who I am in some way. In retrospect that was a foolish thought. It made me wait longer to seek help than I should and in the end I was still like my old self (but better).
A certain sort of ruthlessness and lack of empathy, accompanied by having an extraordinarily driven personality, certainly seems to often make things happen (see also: Steve Jobs). The ages-old question is – is it worth it? Do ends justify the means?
I don't know if it is worth it, but history is filled with people who treated others around them badly but achieved outsized success that much of humans can only dream of - including art (Picasso was terrible to others), military (Genghis Khan was ruthless to his own army), business etc.
A certain sort of ruthlessness and lack of empathy, accompanied by having an extraordinarily driven personality, certainly seems to often make things happen (see also: Steve Jobs). The ages-old question is – is it worth it? Do ends justify the means?
I feel like Jobs was successful despite being abusive, not because of it.
A certain sort of ruthlessness and lack of empathy, accompanied by having an extraordinarily driven personality, certainly seems to often make things happen (see also: Steve Jobs). The ages-old question is – is it worth it? Do ends justify the means?
People can be ruthless without being abusive. Linus had effectively ultimate power over the kernel for quite some time, so he could have said things like: "I disagree with this patch and I'm not going to merge it. It does these things wrong, and this line of reasoning makes no sense. Change these things and explain the reasoning behind this and I'll look at it again." Most of his rants that I've read could have been…
> People can be ruthless without being abusive.
Everybody has a different conviction about what is abusive and what is not.
A slowgoing development for him, still I sympathize and wish him the best while wondering ironically if personal issues aside what works best. It brings to mind fundamental organizational and management. Is it better to have a "rude" organization? Calling bullshit early and often instead of polite everything is fine stacks of lies since it would be impolite to point out having O(N!) code just can't work for anything…
Can’t you blend them? In other words I’d love to work in an organization that can politely call bullshit early and often. It is possible to fundamentally disagree without making it personal. Really good to see him acknowledge this and tackle it head on. I hope he gains a better perspective. Thank goodness for Linus and Linux!
I think it's possible to blend a polite environment and a no-nonsense environment as long as you're physically working together, or at a minimum doing video conferences. IIRC, Linus said that one of the reasons he used such strong language and is so abrasive on the mailing list is because so many communication cues are lost when you don't have tone of voice and body language to add context to the actual words. Being over the top aggressive and harsh was his way of ensuring that his message was completely unambiguos. That said, most people don't want to work with someone like that, and he addresses this when he talks about people leaving kernel development specifically because of him. If they continue using the mailing list for development, I think we need to expect that development will slow a little at first since there will probably be more back-and-forth between developers. That said, hopefully having a better working environment will encourage more people to be kernel developers, negating the slowdown caused by a more cordial mailing list. I'm also really happy to see Linus setting a positive example for taking care of yourself in addition to your project.