I have very few code projects that I really truly feel passionate about.
In my opinion Linus' violent reactions stems the fact that he truly cares about his product. These violent outburst kinda proofs my point. A tech lead that cares about the product will of course get mad when other messes with their "baby". I myself at times have "lost-it" like that but only when I truly cared about the code. The stability of the Linux kernel is a direct result of this kind of passion. Like it or not the proof is in the pudding.
Linus on "acting professionally"
101–110 of 505 posts
Re: Linus on "acting professionally"
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, it's rather " If you don't like it, fork it. "
That's a very hypocritical approach I believe. A few years' ago our ex-prime minister said that if you don't like what's going on in the country, you're free to leave. It doesn't work like that.
Not good comparison.
A country is essentially a fixed physical plot of land, with people, resources, climate, etc. If you leave a country you have to leave all of those things (and more) behind.
Forking code essentially gives you the ability to take everything, and then move it in your own new direction. You leave behind only the parts you thought were "bad" or unprofessional or whatever.
Re: Linus on "acting professionally"
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, it's rather " If you don't like it, fork it. "
That's a very hypocritical approach I believe. A few years' ago our ex-prime minister said that if you don't like what's going on in the country, you're free to leave. It doesn't work like that.
That's a bit of a an apples-to-oranges comparison. An open-source project isn't exactly a democratic government. It's not about protecting the people, it's about getting shit done and getting it done right.
Re: Linus on "acting professionally"
#104Linus is dead wrong here. When he says acting professionally means "fake politeness, the lying, the office politics and backstabbing, the passive aggressiveness, and the buzzwords", he's attacking a straw man: none of that behaviour is professional, and to say that professional behaviour must degenerate to that behaviour is a stretch at best. Aggression is not warranted in a professional environment; neither overt (a…
> fake politeness, the lying, the office politics and backstabbing, the passive aggressiveness, and the buzzwords
that describes pretty well what is happening in so called professional environments. I have been pissed up at people and told them in their face what I thought of them when they fucked something up for the 4th time in a row, and I was reprimanded for this several times. Office politics does not like honesty. It encourages fake politeness and you indeed end up with people talking in your back like women. This sucks bad and I applaud Linus for taking the stance of saying what needs to be said.
Re: Linus on "acting professionally"
#105In a long term relationship, I don't like subtlety and politeness. It just leads to emotional amplification on the receiver side - the receiver just learns to "turn up the volume" on anything said to try find the true signal. (Was that praise just a bit faint this time, hiding some kind of displeasure with my work? What was that slight smile about?) Some of the most offensive put-downs come as faint praise from peopl…
I fully agree.
Some people call this being transparent. Let people see what you really feel, and let them be sure that when they see your approval, they can be damn sure you are really approving and not just faking it.
Now, there is a difference between being transparent or honest and being aggressive or rude, and I don't approve of the latter. But that interpretation depends on the people involved and their relationship: what may be considered rude by a third party or someone from a different culture, may be considered normal and acceptable by the ones involved.
If you would take offense by something that you say/said to others, they you are being rude. Otherwise, you are being honest. Pretty simple rule.
But sometimes people are just so used to politically correct (faked) behavior that they take transparency for rudeness, and honesty for impoliteness.
Re: Linus on "acting professionally"
#106Earlier quoted context omitted.
You've obviously never worked in an office, or you have taken a big step away from reality. The things Linus mentions are what happens as a result of supposed "professionalism". People are emotional, reactionary creatures with very different needs. These people are kernel developers, not 4 year olds. If they commit code that is fucking stupid, they should be called fucking stupid for it. As was shown on a recent post…
this is a false dichotomy. it's possible to be succint, harsh, and directly to the point without swearing or being abusive. for example, off the top of my head: "stephen, this code is riddled with basic errors and is completely unacceptable. please fix a, b, and c immediately and know that if you make mistakes like this again, your contributions will no longer be welcome." versus: "stephen, WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WIT…
In my experience, the closer you are to action the more swearing (sales, press, front-line dev) and the polite stuff is more for the office bureaucrats who aren't critical to the success of the organization. There's something refreshingly blunt and urgent about the 2nd case.
(Edit: My experience includes Fortune 100 in consumer tech and finance)
Re: Linus on "acting professionally"
#107I agree completely with Linus, what he is saying is simple: people are different and they behave in different ways; you cannot force anybody to behave in a way that don't belong to him/her.
Then is raising the point: "How we manage a team of different people who need to interact each other ?"
It is not "if you don't like get out", it is more something like: "I know why you don't like, you don't like because you are expecting thing that you should not expect, so change your expectation."
Then him is using a very powerful language, maybe too powerful for a public mail list, but again is just the way Linus is, so get mad for it simply means to don't have understand a single word of his speech.
Re: Linus on "acting professionally"
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
The real danger here is that once you've developed the habit of berating people who screw up, you'll continue to do it when it's not really called for. I'm no shrinking violet. I got a good ass-chewing from time to time in the Navy and each time I deserved it. That said, you'd be surprised to hear that ass-chewing doesn't happen NEARLY as often as you'd expect it to in a hyper-aggressive life-or-death type world like…
This reminds me of stories and discussions about athletic coaches who belittle and insult their players. There is the same sort of division between reactions to them...some folks will say someone like Bobby Knight is a great coach and leader of men, while others will call him out as wacko who gets off pushing guys around.
This serves to illustrate the serious disconnect between the Linus the general public sees through these occasional stories, and the Linus people who actually follow kernel development see.
Some of the coaches you're talking about display apoplectic aggression as a matter of routine. Linus is never genteel, but his serious rants are unusual. You just don't hear much about him the rest of the time, because most of what he says is completely uninteresting to non-kernel-devs. It seriously skews your perception.
Re: Linus on "acting professionally"
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's rude and additionally it doesn't seem to achieve anything positive that can't be achieved more politely. It saves time when you don't have to carefully structure each criticism in a compliment sandwich and so forth. It's understood in this environment that that's how the story goes - the excerpts people see of 'linus being rude again' are tut-tutted by a bunch of people who've never read a single other message o…
It’s not as black and white as you make it out to be. On one end of the spectrum, we have the inane “compliment sandwich”. On the other, we have Linus saying “your code is shit”. In the middle, we have professional yet effective criticism. Something like, “Sorry, we’re not going to take this code — it’s too half-baked and exposes some serious security vulnerabilities.”
Insulting the person probably serves as a filter - at that point that person either shapes up or stops committing, either of which is a better outcome for Linus than that person continuing to commit crap code for Linus to have to look at/approve. Your more reasonable comment doesn't have the same effect, so it's not the strictly better solution, depending on what Linus values.
Re: Linus on "acting professionally"
#110Torvalds seems to be a real bully. And it hurts me to see all these responses justifying his behaviour, as if this is the way it must be. Just look at this message: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:1TUvG3J... There is no justification for this kind of behaviour. If anybody else behaved this way, they would be sent to a psychiatrist. But apparently since it's Linus Torvalds, he's just being a littl…
I remember that thread. You have a senior kernel committer breaking userspace and then turning around and laying the blame on the userspace application when it broke. In Linus' email I see cursing, and an ass chewing for all to see. The thing is, the kernel mailing list being in the open makes it so we see conversations like this, but they should be seen as the equivalent of a private conversation, because that's wha…
I find verbal abuse in private just as inacceptable as in public.