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“The 's' is sad”: 4-year-old submits Linux kernel doc patch (2014)

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Re: “The 's' is sad”: 4-year-old submits Linux kernel doc patch (2014)

#71

Post by Latty »

golergka wrote: post #30
gowld wrote: post #9

Linus on trivial patches: https://lkml.org/lkml/2004/12/20/255 [ Linux-kernel added back into the cc, because I actually think this is important. ] On Tue, 21 Dec 2004, Jesper Juhl wrote: > Should I just stop attemting to make these trivial cleanups/fixes/whatever patches? are they more noice than gain? am I being a pain to more skilled people on lkml or can you all live with my, sometimes quite ignorant, patches? I…

I really hope that next time when somebody tries to paint Linus as an asshole and a toxic force for the community because of his rants, someone remembers to link this email too.

Linus admitted himself that his behavior was sometimes out of line. That doesn't mean he was always "an asshole", just that sometimes he was. He has accepted that and worked to change it.

Stop trying to paint progress as a bad thing.

Re: “The 's' is sad”: 4-year-old submits Linux kernel doc patch (2014)

#72

Post by Andrex »

hyperman1 wrote: post #40
golergka wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really hope that next time when somebody tries to paint Linus as an asshole and a toxic force for the community because of his rants, someone remembers to link this email too.

It demonstrates how Linus is not only a good programmer, but also a good leader. I get the same idea as with the first Gordon Ramsey Kitchen-fixing programmes. Apparently, people said it was insane how he dared to swear on TV. But basically, he notices things are very wrong, makes sure he gets to the bottom of the mess, and hammers the ugly message very publicly into some owner who lost any connection with reality. I…

Unrelated to the article, but the early British seasons of Kitchen Nightmares were so good.

I still enjoy watching the Fox version (and his new show, 24 Hours), but I appreciate those original seasons much more.

Re: “The 's' is sad”: 4-year-old submits Linux kernel doc patch (2014)

#73

Post by brailsafe »

LyndsySimon wrote: post #25
commandlinefan wrote: post #7

Well, now a 4-year-old has one more kernel patch than I have...

There's nothing stopping you, except finding the time. One of the things I'm most proud of as a dev is a tiny contribution to the Nim standard library. It's a single commit and very simple, but made the PostgreSQL adapter consistent with the other RBDMSs' adapters. At the time, I'd been using Nim for only a couple of days, but that didn't stop me from being able to contribute in a meaningful way. I'm amused and humbl…

Good catch there. Looks like you fixed one of those things that I'd waste hours on not realizing is the issue.

Re: “The 's' is sad”: 4-year-old submits Linux kernel doc patch (2014)

#74

Post by core-questions »

golergka wrote: post #64
PhasmaFelis wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone can be an asshole and a great leader, at the same or different times. Linus himself, to his credit, recently admitted that he's been unreasonably abusive and is trying to learn better.[0] People are complicated. He needn't be either a saint or a demon. [0] https://lkml.org/lkml/2018/9/16/167

The thing is, all Linus rants that I've seen are entirely reasonable. Yes, calling someone stupid is rude, but rude things should be used in extreme circumstances. And when a single developer can negatively affect millions - wait, actually, billions - of people around the world with a stupid patch, that's exactly the case where being rude and aggressive is entirely reasonable.

> all Linus rants that I've seen are entirely reasonable

Spot on. I'd hate to be on the receiving side, but look at what we've all gotten from this effort - in a Machiavellian sense it really has been the correct choice.

Re: “The 's' is sad”: 4-year-old submits Linux kernel doc patch (2014)

#75

Post by kenneth »

This uncannily reminds me of how I first learned to program (at ~10 years old, not 4, sadly).

Growing up, at my grandparents house, we had a communal old Mac (running OS 7 or 8, and BeOS for a while). Being a curious kid, I would often watch my uncle play Civilization II, and I would play myself. One day, I went to observe what he was playing, and instead it was programing in FutureBASIC. It sparked my interest, and he taught me the basics. This became a lifelong hobby, and I went from learning FutureBASIC from him, to then discovering a whole world of information online, learning REALBasic and PHP next, and C, Objective-C, and more. As a teenager, I made Mac apps and websites, and eventually when the iPhone came out, mobile apps. This gave me disposable income in high school (from selling shareware) and funded my one-way ticket and move to Silicon Valley.

A simple gesture like that, that sparks the right interest, can give someone an entirely different life and career.

Re: “The 's' is sad”: 4-year-old submits Linux kernel doc patch (2014)

#76

Post by ahje »

anticensor wrote: post #45
ProAm wrote: post #27

Until a 4-year old can deal with the efficacy in which Linus communicates with other humans they should not be allowed to submit patches.

It takes some time to get used to Finnish style of management.

No worries -- based on their names, I'd say the girl and her uncle are Finnish as well. :)

Re: “The 's' is sad”: 4-year-old submits Linux kernel doc patch (2014)

#77

Post by sytelus »

gowld wrote: post #9

Linus on trivial patches: https://lkml.org/lkml/2004/12/20/255 [ Linux-kernel added back into the cc, because I actually think this is important. ] On Tue, 21 Dec 2004, Jesper Juhl wrote: > Should I just stop attemting to make these trivial cleanups/fixes/whatever patches? are they more noice than gain? am I being a pain to more skilled people on lkml or can you all live with my, sometimes quite ignorant, patches? I…

Linus says:

> I think the trivial patches are among the most important ones - exactly because they are the "entry" patches for every new developer.

I have been running a fairly successful open source project and this is not exactly my experience. I guess about 70% of pull request I get is simple spell, grammar, white spaces and the likes. Some time folks send this in wholesale because they want their personal favorite verbiage. It takes enormous amount of time to go through each line and each file to make sure something else is not sipping in. However, more importantly, rarely I have seen these text fixers to send any real code fixes. Vast majority of them are just one offs.

My thesis is that there are lots of folks out there just trying to brag to be "contributor" for popular open source projects and they just move on from one project to next rarely taking time to settle down in any individual project. This might be not be the case for Linux kernel but might be the case for other smaller projects.

Re: “The 's' is sad”: 4-year-old submits Linux kernel doc patch (2014)

#78

Post by canadaduane »

sytelus wrote: post #77
gowld wrote: post #9

Linus on trivial patches: https://lkml.org/lkml/2004/12/20/255 [ Linux-kernel added back into the cc, because I actually think this is important. ] On Tue, 21 Dec 2004, Jesper Juhl wrote: > Should I just stop attemting to make these trivial cleanups/fixes/whatever patches? are they more noice than gain? am I being a pain to more skilled people on lkml or can you all live with my, sometimes quite ignorant, patches? I…

Linus says: > I think the trivial patches are among the most important ones - exactly because they are the "entry" patches for every new developer. I have been running a fairly successful open source project and this is not exactly my experience. I guess about 70% of pull request I get is simple spell, grammar, white spaces and the likes. Some time folks send this in wholesale because they want their personal favorit…

A more generous interpretation (and the one that I think explains my very short stints as a contributor in just the way you describe) is that I really appreciate the project, want to help somehow, but won't/can't commit to deep work on the project. I also see many projects that practically beg for help "even if it's just documentation" and believe small contributions to be similar to adding a dollar to the tip jar.

Re: “The 's' is sad”: 4-year-old submits Linux kernel doc patch (2014)

#79

Post by canadaduane »

antirez wrote: post #35
gowld wrote: post #9

Linus on trivial patches: https://lkml.org/lkml/2004/12/20/255 [ Linux-kernel added back into the cc, because I actually think this is important. ] On Tue, 21 Dec 2004, Jesper Juhl wrote: > Should I just stop attemting to make these trivial cleanups/fixes/whatever patches? are they more noice than gain? am I being a pain to more skilled people on lkml or can you all live with my, sometimes quite ignorant, patches? I…

I agree on the general concept of your post, however I cannot observe, at least for the things I maintain, that there is this pattern of "people starting small". At least not small in the sense of trivial changes. They maybe start submitting a small PR but that is most of the times already at the level of the contribution that they'll make in the future. So people that will become core contributors will send a small…

Perhaps there is a community-wide phenomenon of progression, but not observable within single projects?

I wonder if this may be similar to the "won't hire jr. developers" tragedy of the commons that many companies are party to: the economy as a whole would benefit from investing in jr. developers (by providing an environment in which they can advance to sr. developers), but for each company individually, there is risk in training someone up in a year or two only to have them leave and become a "mid-level developer" at another company.

Re: “The 's' is sad”: 4-year-old submits Linux kernel doc patch (2014)

#80

Post by la6470 »

black-tea wrote: post #34
chris_wot wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“So please don't stop. Yes, those trivial patches _are_ a bother. Damn, they are _horrible_. But at the same time, the devil is in the detail, and they are needed in the long run. Both the patches themselves, and the people that grew up on them.”

I'm sorry but there's no way the 4 year old learnt anything from this. Maybe the adult did, though. Is that the point?

No that is exactly how to spoil a kid - pandering to their meaningless opinions. That’s how snowflakes are formed.
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