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Linus Torvalds: 'I Do No Coding Any More'

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Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I Do No Coding Any More'

#31

Post by tonyedgecombe »

xfitm3 wrote: post #15
hirundo wrote: post #7

This is sad, not so much because of the lack of code coming from this world class programmer, but because coding is such fun, and Torvalds isn't having fun programming, else he'd be doing it. I'm closing in on forty years of coding and still get a kick out of it. I'd still be doing it if I weren't getting paid for it. But my skills are at best, uh, modest compared to Linus. I'd think that doing a thing so much better…

Coding is fun but for me collaborative development has stopped being fun. People can be rude, biased, and it seems there is always someone with 50 questions or a concern who sucks the life right out of it.

This is what I don't like about open source, it seems to encourage these sort of behaviours.

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I Do No Coding Any More'

#32

Post by technics256 »

dasil003 wrote: post #26

> commit messages to me are almost as important as the code change itself This is high on my list of code craftsmanship points. It's very difficult to explain to young programmers who have never worked on an old code base how valuable this is when done well. In fact, often you hear complaints about how a code base "is crap", but more often than not I'd wager this is just a result of the context at the time not being…

Where can one learn the art of excellent commit messages and when to rebase, etc?

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I Do No Coding Any More'

#34

Post by pengaru »

hasmolo wrote: post #6
statquontrarian wrote: post #3

> So commit messages to me are almost as important as the code change itself. Why commit messages rather than code comments?

I've seen that useful commit message make it incredibly easy to see where the code came from and is going. It also never gets 'out of sync' like code comments tend to, as it's a comment on a static place in the code, not a dynamic one.

> It also never gets 'out of sync' like code comments tend to, as it's a comment on a static place in the code, not a dynamic one.

That's simply not true, not in a git world where rebasing to rewrite history is standard practice.

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I Do No Coding Any More'

#36

Post by snarfy »

When you are on your second rewrite, wondering why the new codebase already has as much tech debt as the previous, it's because you don't have a Linus. Better engineers might help, but what really matters is a better filter, one that has final say on the commits and the release date.

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I Do No Coding Any More'

#38

Post by dasil003 »

technics256 wrote: post #32
dasil003 wrote: post #26

> commit messages to me are almost as important as the code change itself This is high on my list of code craftsmanship points. It's very difficult to explain to young programmers who have never worked on an old code base how valuable this is when done well. In fact, often you hear complaints about how a code base "is crap", but more often than not I'd wager this is just a result of the context at the time not being…

Where can one learn the art of excellent commit messages and when to rebase, etc?

This is a good start: https://chris.beams.io/posts/git-commit/

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I Do No Coding Any More'

#39

Post by emps-new-groove »

hirundo wrote: post #7

This is sad, not so much because of the lack of code coming from this world class programmer, but because coding is such fun, and Torvalds isn't having fun programming, else he'd be doing it. I'm closing in on forty years of coding and still get a kick out of it. I'd still be doing it if I weren't getting paid for it. But my skills are at best, uh, modest compared to Linus. I'd think that doing a thing so much better…

You enjoy certain ways of thinking. Code is beautiful because it leveraged many skills you and I love.

You can, however, use those same muscles and skills via other mediums and activities. It’s different which is different.

Re: Linus Torvalds: 'I Do No Coding Any More'

#40

Post by Ericson2314 »

statquontrarian wrote: post #3

> So commit messages to me are almost as important as the code change itself. Why commit messages rather than code comments?

Comments describe the code as it currently exists, commit messages describe the evolution of the code. This is a very important distinction.

1. If one needs to understand the history of the code to understand the code in its current state, the code is bad.

2. But if one is one is already familiar with the old code, it is easier to leverage that to understand the new code than start from scratch.

So we write commit messages for 2, but per 1 we can't have those commit messages be the only way to understand it, nor can we have the code comments refer to the old versions of the code that are removed[1].

[1]: except for the vaguest "other xxx you might think of were tried and didn't work".

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