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Linus on "acting professionally"

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Re: Linus on "acting professionally"

#191

Post by vacri »

rtpg wrote: post #171
vacri wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet another comment chiding Torvalds for not maintaining civility... while insulting him ('being a douche'). You talk about being 'incapable of realising' - perhaps review your own comment.

isn't any form of criticism an insult? Plus we're talking about Torvald's attitude, hard to avoid personal attacks when we're talking about the person himself.

Not at all. Constructive criticism isn't insulting by definition.

Calling someone a douche isn't constructive criticism. And there's a difference between attacking a person and attacking the actions - and look at what Torvalds does. Even his famous "shut the fuck up Mauro" comment is telling Mauro that his behaviour is inappropriate. He's not saying 'Mauro, you are a douche' directly insulting the guy, he's saying "I'm angry with you because you're breaking our tenets", talking about his actions and behaviour, and he even finishes up with expecting Mauro to fix the technical issue - a tacit acknowledgment of capability.

Re: Linus on "acting professionally"

#192

Post by petercooper »

If someone pushed their cart in front of him at the grocery store checkout and said "I hate lines. This is just how I roll." I wonder if he'd be OK with this other person's "expectations" of behavior.

The argument that acting "professionally" is an act or compromise we must try to avoid is bizarre to me. I dislike compromising over all sorts of things but having manners and not just doing everything or acting in a way your impulses desire is much of what it means to be an adult than an adolescent.

Forget the term "professional" even, let's just go with "courtesy" or "having manners." Fake, they may be, but people who act upon negative impulses in public whether sexual, violent, or even just bad language aren't typically going to have a good time.

Re: Linus on "acting professionally"

#193

Post by rahoulb »

scotty79 wrote: post #139
davidw wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even "your code is shit" is direct, but directed at the code, not the person. He seems to sometimes take it even farther and call people stupid, which just seems wrong to me. "This code is shit" seems like it'd be even better, as it takes even more of the 'you' out of it.

It's technically different but in practice people react pretty much same way when you tell them they did something stupid and when you tell them they are stupid if it was propmpted by them doing someting stupid.

I disagree - saying "that was a stupid thing to do" is very different to saying "you are stupid for doing that" and most people will notice that.

Re: Linus on "acting professionally"

#194

Post by mordae »

anthonyb wrote: post #43
claudius wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding the last bit, I don’t quite see the point. If I had a wife and she ripped off the sink, put a plastic tub there and called it an improvement, because the metal in the sink could rust, I would be quite clear with her that I think this is a ludicrously stupid idea and she should feel extremely dumb for even thinking of it, her being my wife or not. (Nitpick: Do you mean Richard Wagner or someone called Vagner…

Pretty sure there's a reason that you don't have a wife, if that's your attitude...

Yeah, also probably a reason why he has life and does not spend most of his free time tiptoeing around an abusive bitch like some many others.

Re: Linus on "acting professionally"

#195

Post by scotty79 »

anthonyb wrote: post #43
claudius wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regarding the last bit, I don’t quite see the point. If I had a wife and she ripped off the sink, put a plastic tub there and called it an improvement, because the metal in the sink could rust, I would be quite clear with her that I think this is a ludicrously stupid idea and she should feel extremely dumb for even thinking of it, her being my wife or not. (Nitpick: Do you mean Richard Wagner or someone called Vagner…

Pretty sure there's a reason that you don't have a wife, if that's your attitude...

Funny thing is most wives wouldn't think twice to critcise their husbands in such way is such circumstances.

Re: Linus on "acting professionally"

#196

Post by jakobe »

vacri wrote: post #174
jakobe wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did not mean to call Torvalds names. Apparently I wasn't careful enough in my wording. I meant to express my frustration how the community often accepts socially inacceptable behaviour from accomplished people. When "normal" people fall into a rage, we tell them to learn coping with their anger. If they keep yelling angrily at people, we might even suggest they see a psychiatrist. Not as an insult, but because we s…

Torvalds is not 'falling into a rage', he's venting, and doing it in a controlled manner, as a ton of people do. He also doesn't 'keep yelling angrily' - it only appears that way because the only comments of his that get publicised are the fruity ones. I remember one of this 'Linus Swore!' threads on HN a while back, linking to a comment of Torvalds' that had little in it but anger... presented out of context. I went…

You are right, I don't know much about Torvalds. He might be a very patient person most of his life. Like any public figure, he is probably badly misrepresented on the web.

But what makes me sad is that when he does snap, there's a large number of people who come and justify his behaviour. People don't say "You are misrepresenting him!". People say "He gave so much to us. He has the right to behave this way."

Re: Linus on "acting professionally"

#197

Post by jwilliams »

phryk wrote: post #154
smtddr wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, basically your position is "If you don't like it, get out". I'm not sure this view is productive in any kind of discussion. Personally, I think the amount of abusive speech & profanity in the tech-field is way too much. I assume(incorrectly?) that it's because it's mostly male and a lot of men like to do that to each other. I personally don't do it to anyone and don't like it being directed at me.

Too much profanity? Well butter my ass and call me fucking skittles! So you want to censor everyone who doesn't buy into your flowery child talk? Fuck that. Cursing is a perfectly fine means of setting emphasis and I sure as shitpissfuckcuntcocksuckermotherfuckertits am not going to surrender that just so some shithead I don't even care about can jack off to his or her little control fantasies. You don't like that? I…

The OP was just commenting that they didn't find abuse and profanity productive. They didn't mention censoring anyone. They said it didn't work for them.

Do you have one single way of expressing yourself? Do you use profanity 100% of the time? Do you automatically reject all feedback on how you express yourself? ... On how you write code? ... Or how you interact with your colleagues?

Because, from your comment, that's how you come across.

All feedback can be made to be useful, even if you end up filtering it out early.

Re: Linus on "acting professionally"

#198

Post by bagacrap »

jakobe wrote: post #37

Torvalds 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…

There is actually a ton of helpful feedback in that email in between the verbal lashings. I don't think he's trying to hurt this guy's feelings as much as he's trying to emphasize the importance of his point, which seems to be a tenet of the Linux kernel development philosophy.

Re: Linus on "acting professionally"

#199

Post by doctorfoo »

phryk wrote: post #154
smtddr wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, basically your position is "If you don't like it, get out". I'm not sure this view is productive in any kind of discussion. Personally, I think the amount of abusive speech & profanity in the tech-field is way too much. I assume(incorrectly?) that it's because it's mostly male and a lot of men like to do that to each other. I personally don't do it to anyone and don't like it being directed at me.

Too much profanity? Well butter my ass and call me fucking skittles! So you want to censor everyone who doesn't buy into your flowery child talk? Fuck that. Cursing is a perfectly fine means of setting emphasis and I sure as shitpissfuckcuntcocksuckermotherfuckertits am not going to surrender that just so some shithead I don't even care about can jack off to his or her little control fantasies. You don't like that? I…

Hacker News: Where IQ and intelligence trumps being pleasant. So many tech types are assholes.

Re: Linus on "acting professionally"

#200

Post by columbo »

This is another great example of why you can't take successful people and distil them down to their base components and say "ah, this is what made him great!"

I believe being a loud-abrasive-dictator works for Linus because he is famous for being a loud-abrasive-dictator.

That's not important. What is important is the reader. Let's be clear on a few things

#1 - Linus doesn't run a business. He's the kernel admin, he's a popular figure, he manages millions of lines of code. That's an entirely different game than what is necessary to run a small/mid/large business. Comparing the two is an apples-to-hammers comparison.

In a business, or small open source project, you have to be willing to deal with what you get. You will make sacrifices, it wont be easy. You might have this great idea but only 2 people are willing to work the occasional weekend on it; are you about to start an email chain calling them all dogshit coders?

Linus doesn't have that problem. He's famous for being Linus. You are not famous for being you.

#2 - YOU need to know how to be critical and polite. I don't care what Linus gets to do. You as a developer, you as a person who isn't famous, you as someone working in a team must (MUST) learn how to give constructive criticism.

"Bob, This isn't up to our quality standards, here's an example (cite)".

Easy, no frills, no shit-sandwich, no sugar-coated-political-correct-everyone-holds-hands-and-sings-around-the-campfire filler text. It's clear and it gets straight to the point. Learn how to do this, or fight an uphill battle with diminishing returns.

Linus can start a project tomorrow and have a hundred developers working on it, you cannot.

#3 - I'd take Linus' opinion on business culture with about the same size of salt as I would when listening to Jonathan Ive's opinion on middle-eastern-politics.

Everyone gets to have an opinion on something. I'm sure Tim Cook has an opinion on healthcare, and Bill Gates has an opinion on footwear. This doesn't make them experts on the subject or even any more informed than your average person. They're famous for doing X, listen to their opinions on X, take everything else as amateur opinion.

Linus is the kernal admin. I want to know how he manages 15 million lines of code, I want to know how he forks/branches/merges this code, how he handles bugs, how he tests it, and how work is handed out. I want to get his opinion on managing code not managing people. He doesn't deal with payroll, 401ks, employee vacations or benefits, he doesn't care about retention, he cares about code.

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