25 Years Later: Interview with Linus Torvalds
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25 Years Later: Interview with Linus Torvalds
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Re: 25 Years Later: Interview with Linus Torvalds
#2Linus’ view on anonymity was surprising to read. I’m not sure I agree with him on that but his view on social media being a platform for the lowest common denominator sure seems agreeable.
Re: 25 Years Later: Interview with Linus Torvalds
#3>Bob: Is there any advice you'd like to give to young programmers/computer science students?
>Linus: I'm actually the worst person to ask. I knew I was interested in math and computers since an early age, and I was largely self-taught until university. And everything I did was fairly self-driven. So I don't understand the problems people face when they say "what should I do?" It's not where I came from at all.
This is a problem I don't understand too. If you are really into something you motivating yourself in doing things. You can see how stupid people are when you just read the questions on Stackoverflow today. Nobody seems to figure things out by themselves anymore.
Same with YouTube, when people explaining simple math things with extremely effort people complaining then that today's teachers are shit. But it's more your own lack if you're not able to imagine these thing inside your mind by yourself.
Re: 25 Years Later: Interview with Linus Torvalds
#4>Bob: Is there any advice you'd like to give to young programmers/computer science students? >Linus: I'm actually the worst person to ask. I knew I was interested in math and computers since an early age, and I was largely self-taught until university. And everything I did was fairly self-driven. So I don't understand the problems people face when they say "what should I do?" It's not where I came from at all. This i…
I think you're confusing laziness, ADD, and a general lack of discipline with stupidity.
Re: 25 Years Later: Interview with Linus Torvalds
#5>Bob: Is there any advice you'd like to give to young programmers/computer science students? >Linus: I'm actually the worst person to ask. I knew I was interested in math and computers since an early age, and I was largely self-taught until university. And everything I did was fairly self-driven. So I don't understand the problems people face when they say "what should I do?" It's not where I came from at all. This i…
You just explained the issue: they're really not into it. They're often going through the motions because they see there's money there or the mythical 'good job' their parents keep telling them to get as far as computing/programming is concerned. In decades past, they would be asking the same questions re: business (or perhaps law or med) school.
Re: 25 Years Later: Interview with Linus Torvalds
#6>Bob: Is there any advice you'd like to give to young programmers/computer science students? >Linus: I'm actually the worst person to ask. I knew I was interested in math and computers since an early age, and I was largely self-taught until university. And everything I did was fairly self-driven. So I don't understand the problems people face when they say "what should I do?" It's not where I came from at all. This i…
I think you're confusing laziness, ADD, and a general lack of discipline with stupidity.
Or simple efficiency. Why spend hours figuring something complex out when the problem has already been solved a million times prior. That's essentially the basis of learning anything.
Sure, at some point it's nice to derive something from first principles to really understand it at a deeper level, but often times that's a complex process and it's aided by learning the thing by repetition prior to learning by how the thing was derived. That's how we learn math after all.
Re: 25 Years Later: Interview with Linus Torvalds
#7Heh, he's using an XPS 13. Take that, Thinkpad snobs.
Re: 25 Years Later: Interview with Linus Torvalds
#8Linus’ view on anonymity was surprising to read. I’m not sure I agree with him on that but his view on social media being a platform for the lowest common denominator sure seems agreeable.
He’s essentially a performer/personality though, and I’m inclined to say his answer is a self-serving performance itself. It would be fine, except that he writes out people who have valid reasons for anonymity - from “i feel like it”, on up. I’m personally not fussed by Linus’ antics, but cringe thinking about sensitive people, maybe still forming their personalities or sense of self, looking up to him.
Hard to argue with his technical chops and many successes, but that doesn’t make him expert in everything he’s got an opinion on. He even punts on a softball question and makes it about himself: “what advice do you have for young programmers and students?” - how about “have fun, exercise and stay healthy and dive in!”
I’m sorry to be negative here, but I wish Linus did better in this regard.
Re: 25 Years Later: Interview with Linus Torvalds
#9>Bob: Is there any advice you'd like to give to young programmers/computer science students? >Linus: I'm actually the worst person to ask. I knew I was interested in math and computers since an early age, and I was largely self-taught until university. And everything I did was fairly self-driven. So I don't understand the problems people face when they say "what should I do?" It's not where I came from at all. This i…
> You can see how stupid people are when you just read the questions on Stackoverflow today. Nobody seems to figure things out by themselves anymore.
I resemble that remark!
It was just yesterday that I was looking up a bit of JavaScript trivia, how to format a number rounded to some number of decimal places.
Yeah, I'm supposed to be some kind of JavaScript expert, so I could have done the obvious "mdn tofixed", right?
But I was working on a Google Maps API project and typed in the first thing that popped into my mind:
https://www.google.com/search?q=six+digit+decimal+place+goog...
And you know what? It took me straight to my own Stack Overflow answer where I explained how to do this, either preserving or removing any trailing zeroes.
Who needs to remember things when you have a service like that? ;-)
Re: 25 Years Later: Interview with Linus Torvalds
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you're confusing laziness, ADD, and a general lack of discipline with stupidity.
Or simple efficiency. Why spend hours figuring something complex out when the problem has already been solved a million times prior. That's essentially the basis of learning anything. Sure, at some point it's nice to derive something from first principles to really understand it at a deeper level, but often times that's a complex process and it's aided by learning the thing by repetition prior to learning by how the…
> Or simple efficiency. Why spend hours figuring something complex out when the problem has already been solved a million times prior.
I agree, at least when it comes to problems that don't fall into your core specialization. When you have a broken pipe, you don't spend several years studying plumbing, you just call a plumber. Similarly, when I have problem with LibreOffice, I don't start reading its source code, I go to Stack Overflow.