Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

25 Years Later: Interview with Linus Torvalds

linuxjournal.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 146 posts

Re: 25 Years Later: Interview with Linus Torvalds

#21

Post by alkonaut »

oraphalous wrote: post #19
qlk1123 wrote: post #18

> Bob: Anything else you want to comment on, either publicly or otherwise? > Linus: I've never had some "message" that I wanted to spread, so ... It's a pity that a man with such influence has no message that he wants to spread, but I can somehow understand this respond. My personal take of this quote can refer to another quote from his TED interview[1]: > I’m an engineer. I’m perfectly happy with all the people who…

>While I wish such leader can speak for values like democracy or human rights... Or maybe people who have no particular expertise in political matters should stop opining so much about them? And maybe we should stop politicising all aspects of culture and existence. There is so much more to life.

There is no feasible way to separate politics from everyday life, and leaving "politics to those who knows about it" isn't really viable. Anyone with a platform whether it is sports, tech, culture should consider what message they are sending. Because there is a message, even from quiet people. "Not politicising" is a political act and statement as well. There is no dodging politics.

Saying "I just play football, I leave politics to politicians" or "I'm just an engineer, I leave politics to the experts" aren't doing that. They are simply saying "I'm happy with what everyone else with an audience says". And the other people with audiences aren't experts either for the most part.

If you have listeners you have a responsibility for what you are saying whether you like it or not. It doesn't matter whether those 1M instagram followers just like to see you do backflips on a bicycle. If have 1M followers you have influence. If you have 10M followers you are a political force. Even if you just ride bikes on instagram.

Saying nothing even remotely political is better than completely screwing up ("Lex Notch"), but it's still the easy way out.

Re: 25 Years Later: Interview with Linus Torvalds

#22

Post by buzzerbetrayed »

oraphalous wrote: post #19
qlk1123 wrote: post #18

> Bob: Anything else you want to comment on, either publicly or otherwise? > Linus: I've never had some "message" that I wanted to spread, so ... It's a pity that a man with such influence has no message that he wants to spread, but I can somehow understand this respond. My personal take of this quote can refer to another quote from his TED interview[1]: > I’m an engineer. I’m perfectly happy with all the people who…

>While I wish such leader can speak for values like democracy or human rights... Or maybe people who have no particular expertise in political matters should stop opining so much about them? And maybe we should stop politicising all aspects of culture and existence. There is so much more to life.

Well spoken. I would be perfectly happy never hearing Linus Torvalds opinions on politics.

Re: 25 Years Later: Interview with Linus Torvalds

#23

Post by FrederickZh »

eartheaterrr wrote: post #20

>As to C, nothing better has come around. >The kind of languages people see under active development aren't for low-level system programming. I found it interesting that he didn't mention Rust. Or is Rust not suitable for kernel development?

He was once asked about Rust during an interview: https://www.infoworld.com/article/3109150/linux-at-25-linus-...

Re: 25 Years Later: Interview with Linus Torvalds

#24

Post by hyperpallium »

ben165 wrote: post #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 i…

One path to knowledge is to answer questions on stackoverflow about them - i.e. google, look at docs, try things, think, etc. This works when askers don't know how to work things out for themselves.

Maybe that's what they need to learn; though maybe they aren't interested in learning it...

OTOH I find many maths explanations wouldn't make sense if I wasn't able to already "imagine it inside my mind by myself" i.e if I didn't already understand it. IMHO this is the fundamental problem of education...

Re: 25 Years Later: Interview with Linus Torvalds

#25

Post by flukus »

alkonaut wrote: post #21
oraphalous wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>While I wish such leader can speak for values like democracy or human rights... Or maybe people who have no particular expertise in political matters should stop opining so much about them? And maybe we should stop politicising all aspects of culture and existence. There is so much more to life.

There is no feasible way to separate politics from everyday life, and leaving "politics to those who knows about it" isn't really viable. Anyone with a platform whether it is sports, tech, culture should consider what message they are sending. Because there is a message, even from quiet people. "Not politicising" is a political act and statement as well. There is no dodging politics. Saying "I just play football, I l…

> Anyone with a platform whether it is sports, tech, culture should consider what message they are sending.

They do, their message is usually related to their field of expertise. A good sportsman will act as an example of how to be a good sport, how to conduct yourself when you lose, how to be a good winner, etc. A good OS maintainer will set an example through code and their leadership will show the team what is and isn't acceptable.

> If you have listeners you have a responsibility for what you are saying whether you like it or not. It doesn't matter whether those 1M instagram followers just like to see you do backflips on a bicycle. If have 1M followers you have influence. If you have 10M followers you are a political force. Even if you just ride bikes on instagram.

If you've got a million followers watching you do backflips on a bike then your audience is not there to hear your political opinions. It's a recipe to lose most of your audience, even the ones that agree aren't there to listen to it.

Assuming you're American, half the countries politics are the opposite of yours, most of the worlds politics are the opposite of yours. Do you really want to be hearing those peoples opinions all the time? Many of those opinions will be quite hurtful to many people.

Re: 25 Years Later: Interview with Linus Torvalds

#26

Post by oraphalous »

alkonaut wrote: post #21
oraphalous wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>While I wish such leader can speak for values like democracy or human rights... Or maybe people who have no particular expertise in political matters should stop opining so much about them? And maybe we should stop politicising all aspects of culture and existence. There is so much more to life.

There is no feasible way to separate politics from everyday life, and leaving "politics to those who knows about it" isn't really viable. Anyone with a platform whether it is sports, tech, culture should consider what message they are sending. Because there is a message, even from quiet people. "Not politicising" is a political act and statement as well. There is no dodging politics. Saying "I just play football, I l…

>There is no feasible way to separate politics from everyday life.

I got up early this morning to look at the fog that had rolled across the city. Politicise that.

> and leaving "politics to those who knows about it" isn't really viable.

Viability is relevant to desired outcomes. What outcome do you desire? Is that outcome a political reality? Given you believe everything is politics anyway - we can safely assume yes to that question. Of course - you're going to want YOUR political outcome and for these leaders to represent your political beliefs. So - really I find it hard to believe you really want anything other than an opportunistic desire to leverage platforms to achieve your desired political outcomes. And for you to achieve that - of course you have to first successfully politicise those platforms.

Some of us - on the other hand - believe that the fewer the vectors of political co-ercion there are - the better. And also - we'd like to get some engineering done among other things - which is harder when things are politically co-opted. Making everything political detracts from quality work generally.

edit: Just to add, I'm not arguing that people shouldn't be politically active. Just because I don't want to talk about how woke a particular pull request might be - doesn't mean I won't take to the streets to demonstrate against some injustice that I oppose.

Re: 25 Years Later: Interview with Linus Torvalds

#27

Post by bch »

adwn wrote: post #17
bch wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> He even punts on a softball question and makes it about himself That's because it was about himself! Bob asked him for his advice. > how about “have fun, exercise and stay healthy and dive in!” That's such an overused, uninspired, undistinguished answer. Why would you ask Linus if that's what you want to hear?

It is - a simplistic throw away I came up with as I typed, and still more valuable than “don’t ask me”. I’m just bemoaning that after 25 years he’s still an antihero.

Re: 25 Years Later: Interview with Linus Torvalds

#28

Post by ekianjo »

qlk1123 wrote: post #18

> Bob: Anything else you want to comment on, either publicly or otherwise? > Linus: I've never had some "message" that I wanted to spread, so ... It's a pity that a man with such influence has no message that he wants to spread, but I can somehow understand this respond. My personal take of this quote can refer to another quote from his TED interview[1]: > I’m an engineer. I’m perfectly happy with all the people who…

> While I wish such leader can speak for values like democracy or human rights, it is just not possible to happen.

If you are a sensible person, you also know it's not possible to have an opinion about everything out there. Every topic is a rabbit hole if you want to understand everything in and out. Most politicians only touch at the surface of things and never go in details. I can understand why someone like an engineer may be reluctant to talk about politics in that sense.

Re: 25 Years Later: Interview with Linus Torvalds

#29

Post by ekianjo »

FrederickZh wrote: post #23
eartheaterrr wrote: post #20

>As to C, nothing better has come around. >The kind of languages people see under active development aren't for low-level system programming. I found it interesting that he didn't mention Rust. Or is Rust not suitable for kernel development?

He was once asked about Rust during an interview: https://www.infoworld.com/article/3109150/linux-at-25-linus-...

> I'm not convinced about Rust for an OS kernel (there's a lot more to system programming than the kernel, though), but at the same time there is no question that C has a lot of limitations.

> To anyone who wants to build their own kernel from scratch, I can just wish them luck. It's a huge project, and I don't think you actually solve any of the really hard kernel problems with your choice of programming language. The big problems tend to be about hardware support (all those drivers, all the odd details about different platforms, all the subtleties in memory management and resource accounting), and anybody who thinks that the choice of language simplifies those things a lot is likely to be very disappointed.

Re: 25 Years Later: Interview with Linus Torvalds

#30

Post by raxxorrax »

alkonaut wrote: post #21
oraphalous wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>While I wish such leader can speak for values like democracy or human rights... Or maybe people who have no particular expertise in political matters should stop opining so much about them? And maybe we should stop politicising all aspects of culture and existence. There is so much more to life.

There is no feasible way to separate politics from everyday life, and leaving "politics to those who knows about it" isn't really viable. Anyone with a platform whether it is sports, tech, culture should consider what message they are sending. Because there is a message, even from quiet people. "Not politicising" is a political act and statement as well. There is no dodging politics. Saying "I just play football, I l…

> There is no feasible way to separate politics from everyday life, and leaving "politics to those who knows about it" isn't really viable.

I vehemently agree with the second statement but the first is absurd without further establishing what "politics" means in this context.

> If you have listeners you have a responsibility

Not everyone listens to admire a person or to see your own views approved. On the contrary, I don't think popularity or visibility implies responsibility. That would also not hold up to reality, restrict the dialogue and patronizes listeners.

Maybe try to convince people on the merrit of your position without treating them like children.

Post reply on HN