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Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#221

Post by raxxorrax »

inawarminister wrote: post #151
raxxorrax wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very true. That makes the mail kind of redundant.

No, it serves a purpose of driving Stallman's point more. Good enough.

True, that comment was just referencing his narrowing of the term Linux and that this is quite typical for him.

I think his point is concise and I fully agree with it.

"Be excellent to each other" is a vastly superior mission statement than the recent COCs in any form.

The arguments of proponents aren't really convincing and I think they fail to recognize the essence of criticism against them.

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#222

Post by Vinnl »

simias wrote: post #97
Vinnl wrote: post #64

His feelings about two of the "sides" of this argument are so recognisable. I'm generally in favour of going out of my way e.g. to make minorities feel more welcome to compensate for the natural tendency to make them feel less welcome. However, the nastiness of some of the people in "my camp" pushes me away from it and makes me reluctant to openly support that cause. In effect, they're really counterproductive, and t…

There will always be garbage people in "your camp", whatever that camp might be. Hell, for some people in "your camp" you'll be the nasty one. The big problem with the internet and modern social networks is that they suck at filtering the noise and getting the interesting bits. In the end if we're not careful we only hear those who shout the loudest and most provocative things. A well researched essay on gender studi…

I wish there was a way to get more of those ideas to me, and people in general, and less of the "I drink white male tears".

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#223

Post by GW150914 »

08-15 wrote: post #212
tylermac1 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You must be insufferable to be around. Here's a novel idea, how about instead of directly resorting to "Your code sucks." we instead say something like "I think there's still some work to do here. Here's the way I would have done this." It's really not that hard to give constructive criticism.

In practice it works like this: "Your code invokes undefined behavior and may fail in the following ways. These corner cases are handled incorrectly. There are a few other cases I'm not sure about, because I have trouble following the logic." "The code is fine. I have tested it!" "It happens to work on you current machine. That's the nature of undefined behavior. It might fail in the future without warning." "I teste…

It would cost you nothing to replace your last line with, “I’m sorry, but that’s not what we’re seeing and we won’t merge it until you fix it. I understand your passion, but I won’t sacrifice the quality of this project for that. Fix the code so that it no longer invokes undefined behavior and we’ll review it, otherwise we have nothing more to talk about.”

The end. No need to call it crap, no need to burn a bridge.

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#224

Post by [deleted] »

alfredmuffin wrote: post #49

I question the professional experience of those suggesting that continuing to be an asshole is the preferable situation here ("but at least he's HONEST "). That would simply not fly at my company. It is absolutely possible to be kind when giving honest and constructive feedback and criticism. Empathy is a skill this industry needs to develop.

[deleted]

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#225

Post by 08-15 »

aetimmes wrote: post #191
08-15 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine you are Linux and you receive a messy patch so poorly structured that you can't follow the logic of the code. As Tony Hoare used to put it, the kind of code that doesn't have obvious bugs, but isn't obviously free of bugs. What do you tell the submitter? You can't really point at specific problems, merely at a gut feeling that the mess must be hiding problems. Then the submitter shoots back: "You rejected my…

You do what you should have done in the first place and locate specific problems. If the code is too clever for you, ask them to refactor in a simpler way rather than rejecting outright.

Well, you ask for improvement and reject. You have to, because you don't want to accept it. That pisses the submitter off. What now?

A possible alternative is to do what Pieter Hintjens recommended: Accept everything, wait for the community to clean it up. Somebody might outright revert the bad patch... you accept that reversion patch, too, because you don't judge, you accept everything. This approach supposedly worked well for Pieter, but 0MQ isn't nearly as big or as visible as Linux.

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#227

Post by robin_reala »

maxk42 wrote: post #211
alfredmuffin wrote: post #49

I question the professional experience of those suggesting that continuing to be an asshole is the preferable situation here ("but at least he's HONEST "). That would simply not fly at my company. It is absolutely possible to be kind when giving honest and constructive feedback and criticism. Empathy is a skill this industry needs to develop.

This isn't a company. It's an all-volunteer force. And educating people with four-letter words is a highly effective way to get people to fall in line with your culture, rather than allowing them to go around half-cocked all the time. A well-placed "fuck you" keeps people humble. Spare the rod and all that. 20 years experience, C-level, and my direct reports love me.

Or possibly the only people subservient enough to put up with that sort of behaviour are the ones that also fawn at your feet? I’d be out of a company like a shot and letting HR know why on the way past if a manager tried to pull that on me.

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#228

Post by DanielBMarkham »

ethbro wrote: post #206
DanielBMarkham wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You'll find that the vast majority of people are vastly less extreme than what twitter and reddit would have you believe. Yep. The medium itself makes everybody look about 100 times more radical than they actually are. Look at it this way: if you're busy working on a small technical detail, your conversation will be around that detail, right? You may be an asshole, and it looks like he's working on that, but you're…

> Sometimes you know something's wrong, and you feel strongly about it -- but you're unable to articulate it in a manner that can be easily consumed. When I think about effective leaders I've known in my career, this is as good of a description of their defining skill as I've heard. They have the ability to correctly identify an issue and then communicate it in a way that others also recognize it.

Completely agree. They don't flub around trying to figure out and contextualize issues. They're able to both categorize the issue and the disagreement and present in ways that everybody can consume.*

We're not all so lucky, though. Many times I've had to tell teams "This is going to sound right. Please forgive me because I'm concerned about X". You can't replace that kind of give-and-take with wordsmithing.

The second skill I've noticed is to be a storytelling master. Great leaders tell engaging stories that emotionally draw you into their way of seeing things.

*A problem occurs when the leader thinks they know what's going on but they are mistaken. In this case better leadership skills can actually lead to poorer overall results. I've seen good people with mission-critical ideas get "facilitated" out of them by well-meaning, nice, and intelligent people who don't know what the hell they're talking about and are unable to accept that fact. Obligatory link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#229

Post by [deleted] »

ethbro wrote: post #213
mikeash wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish people would stop being so concerned about what other people think. If treating people well is the right thing to do, then do it. If people are nasty when they try to make you treat people well, ignore them. When people say that they wanted to do the right thing but got pushed away because the advocates were jerks, that just sounds like an excuse. That’s not to say that it’s ok to be a jerk just because you’re…

Civility is the bedrock on which justice is built. That's why Gandhi, King, and Mandela effected change. And so many passionate others did not.

[deleted]

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I'll never be cuddly but I can be more polite'

#230

Post by alfredmuffin »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #196
alfredmuffin wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't speak for others, but at my large tech company the push for empathy has demonstrably increased employee happiness. Naturally, the individuals who argued against these changes were older white male engineers too ingrained in their ways.

> but at my large tech company the push for empathy has demonstrably increased employee happiness That says nothing bout the efficacy of the policy in terms of getting things done though. It is true that it is usually possible to be honest without being abrasive, however it is my experience that abrasive honesty is worth a lot more than polite dishonesty when it comes to getting things done. So in that way, "at least…

Employee happiness is directly correlated with productivity.
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