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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'

#391

Post by personjerry »

cgriswald wrote: post #363
JohnBooty wrote: post #323

> I'm still not exactly the most empathetic person. > But I'm hoping I can at least 'fake it until I > make it'. This is great! If you ask me, "faking it" is really just as good as "actually" being a more helpful or empathetic person. What do you think "actually" being a helpful or empathetic person is like? It's basically just continually expending the effort to be helpful and empathetic. Let's say my brother calls…

> If you ask me, "faking it" is really just as good as "actually" being a more helpful or empathetic person. It is important to make the distinction between this and what Linus actually said, which was "fake it *until I make it" (emphasis added). The latter is essentially practice or exercise to develop empathy. The former is essentially how high-functioning psychopaths work. > Let's say my brother calls me up on a S…

In this case, what's wrong with being a high-functioning psychopath?

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

#392

Post by sctb »

notyourday wrote: post #136
matthewmacleod wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I've done that – and I've not been a dick about it. Why is it such a prevalent idea that someone has to be an asshole in order to give negative feedback, or to take an action that someone doesn't like?

Because me telling you that your code sucks is not being anti-gay if you are gay or anti-trans if you are trans. It is me telling you that your code sucks. You should either make your code not suck, or you can GTFO unless I'm lower on the org chart than you are, then you can do whatever you want, including telling me to shove it or GTFO and based on how I feel about it, I can either forget about it or GTFO. That's eq…

sigh

It should be pretty obvious that this thread is going nowhere good. Can we please stop wasting our time shouting past each other? If we're not receptive to learning something new we should just go elsewhere because that's what this site is for.

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

#393

Post by luord »

As someone who doesn't give a damn about other people so I treat everyone (except family and the few friends I have) with the same curtness, here's hoping what Linus said here is just an "extra mile" thing (but even that sets a not necessarily good example). I never insult anyone, but I'm also never friendly to anyone, beyond a perfunctory smile when buying something from a cashier for example.

I'm similarly short on text. Linus saying that he could be more polite tells me that even that is not "PC" enough and, if so, that's a problem. Nobody is owed any friendliness or niceness, just acknowledgement, and even that only if the other person needs us.

In short, I thought he just needed to stop insulting people, but that that aside, there was no problem with his communication, apparently that's not the general consensus. Or I'm hoping I'm reading the situation wrong.

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

#394

Post by eropple »

whiddershins wrote: post #355
eropple wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The low emotional intelligence on display throughout this thread is both disappointing and unsurprising. I have fired "nice and really trying" people. Because they were decent people, I have also then recommended them to my personal network for positions that are better suited to their skills (and more than once have they gone on to success at a friend's company), because hiring somebody who can't do the job is manag…

I would like to point out: you just insulted a number of people’s emotional intelligence, while talking about how important it is to be nice.

Correctly identifying poor emotional intelligence as such is not necessarily nice, no. Fortunately I never-not-once said a word about "how important it is to be nice".

It's important to not be a toxic asshole.

There is a real and obvious difference between the assertion I made and the assertion you are attempting to say that I made.

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

#395

Post by wccrawford »

mike22223333 wrote: post #317

I'm probably a person with not so great social skills. I'm a person of color. I do not need SJW's to defend me. Please do not destroy our culture. All of a sudden this movement to add "diversity" and other crap is just not right. I agree there is some casual racism/racism for the sake of racism in the community, but I am personally not even bothered and it has never affected me (I ignored them and they stopped and so…

I'm white. I decided long ago that everyone needs to treat everyone fairly. Part of that is basing promotions/etc on merit, but part of that is understanding that people are different and have different strengths and weaknesses, some of which are because of the culture they come from.

This applies equally to whites and people of color, rich and poor, nationalities, and more. I have yet to find a culture that didn't have both problems and benefits when you generalize about them.

I've also yet to have that generalization be actually useful when evaluating an individual.

But I have to ask: If I stop someone from discriminating against you, with or without your knowledge, is that really "destroying your culture"? If I'm in a meeting and stop someone from ruling out a potential candidate because of skin color, did I harm their culture?

I can't see how that's possible.

I could see how "culture" changes over generations as economic status changes. But I'm certainly not going to refrain from helping someone because I think there's a chance it'll change the culture of their grandchildren.

That said, I've been in situations where I could "help" someone avoid some racial prejudice and was asked not to by that person. As they wished, I did nothing. I didn't like it, and I still wish I could have helped them, but I felt I had to honor their wishes first. (The person I'm thinking about eventually quit from stress and moved out of state.)

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

#396

Post by mcguire »

lostmyoldone wrote: post #367
mcguire wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could have taken a quote from 2012: " "...should be retroactively aborted. Who the f+ck does idiotic things like that? How did they not die as babies, considering that they were likely too stupid to find a tit to suck on?" "

I always read Linus as a Finn speaking English as Finnish is spoken in the company of good friends, profanity will be used, often quite liberally, and if anything, the Swedish speaking minority he harkens from swear even more. Only outdone by the good people of Åland, to which swearing seems to be a form of art, or how they breathe. I believe it's well known that people tend to curse more in a second language, applyi…

So you don't see a difference between:

* This code is idiotic.

* You are an idiot.

* You should be dead.

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

#397

Post by dbuder »

I think it's a pity he has been made to kowtow, I hope it doesn't diminish his productivity, some of his behaviour was bad but I'm always willing to give rockstars a pass up until a point. Things are in a different phase for OSS and Linus and maybe it won't affect him.

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

#398

Post by eropple »

notyourday wrote: post #389
eropple wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. This...uh. There's a lot of shitty to unpack in this post. First: I've never had to fire somebody I hired. I have had to fire people I inherited . It doesn't suck less, but given your odd attempt at turning this into a referendum on people who aren't big on jerkass coworkers, I feel like it helps complete the picture. Second: firing people is rather unlike "coddling". Third: that I have fired people does not mea…

Your website's cert has expired nearly a week ago. Competency is clearly overrated in the land of empathetic bosses. Edit: So I address for this being a dig. It is an observation. Those who are empathetic eventually spend all of their time talking about feels rather than addressing issues. Time is a finite resource. Sooner or later ( typically sooner rather than later ) one needs to decide what he or she is going to…

Oh, darn! I was on vacation and a reboot seems to have horked the cron job that runs certbot on the website that fronts my basically-spun-down consulting business and a side project of mine. I probably should have gone through my emails a bit closer when I got back from my trip! And, of course, that totally invalidates an argument.

I want to dig, though: is this what you think an argument is, from you? Do you think you're saying something meaningful? I can guarantee you've fucked up something quite a lot bigger and quite a lot more expensive in your career--or you haven't done anything, anything, of note. (Hell, I have. And I talk about it regularly! That's how you learn things.)

And yet that doesn't diminish your argument. Your argument falls on its face on its merits.

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

#399

Post by sctb »

eropple wrote: post #101
notyourday wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you ever fire people who are nice and really trying?

The low emotional intelligence on display throughout this thread is both disappointing and unsurprising. I have fired "nice and really trying" people. Because they were decent people, I have also then recommended them to my personal network for positions that are better suited to their skills (and more than once have they gone on to success at a friend's company), because hiring somebody who can't do the job is manag…

> The low emotional intelligence on display throughout this thread is both disappointing and unsurprising.

You're pretty close to behaving a certain way mentioned in this comment yourself. Could you please, like we've asked before, try not to be so mean to other users?

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

#400

Post by mcguire »

kyberias wrote: post #309
mcguire wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could have taken a quote from 2012: " "...should be retroactively aborted. Who the f+ck does idiotic things like that? How did they not die as babies, considering that they were likely too stupid to find a tit to suck on?" "

That is just super funny. It always will be.

It is, absolutely.

If you view software development as entertainment.

If you view it asa profession, maybe not.

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