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Linus Torvalds on aliasing

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Re: Linus Torvalds on aliasing

#171

Post by rdsubhas »

ralfn wrote: post #124
mosselman wrote: post #119

I would go out of my way to avoid people who communicate like this with me. People put time and energy in making software better, at least in their own eyes, for others and then they get textually abused like this by someone who has his fame to protect himself with. He also does no service to his own arguments by peppering them with childish swearing because things like "So standards are not some kind of holy book th…

When it comes to being oversensitive needy little things there is no true Scottsman. As a northern European I find it not only comfortable that Linus runs Linux, but I would be less comfortable if it was another American smile in face pretend to be your friend but be shady as fuck attitude that you guys seem to confuse for 'professionalism'. So let's chalk this to cultural differences. We wouldn't hire someone like y…

While Linus may be right, why is it that we always find only "Linus ranting out against people" threads that trend? In a positive way, why don't we have "Linus gets ranted against" posts? Is it because Linus is always right? Or is it because nobody speaks up against Linus? Or is it because Linus isn't actively coding much since git days? Or is it just because it happens but doesn't get as much visibility?

I'm just asking this to see if this culture is one way or goes both ways...

Re: Linus Torvalds on aliasing

#172

Post by mosselman »

zwischenzug wrote: post #138
mosselman wrote: post #119

I would go out of my way to avoid people who communicate like this with me. People put time and energy in making software better, at least in their own eyes, for others and then they get textually abused like this by someone who has his fame to protect himself with. He also does no service to his own arguments by peppering them with childish swearing because things like "So standards are not some kind of holy book th…

My wife works in mental health, dealing with people at the very lowest ebb. You'd think the therapists' internal meetings would be full of carefully worded and graded polite discussion, but just yesterday she told me about a meeting where the lead therapist said to one particular member of the group, 'If you don't do X right, we're fucked. You are fucking us up!' I don't know if that's good or not, but it's not just…

I am not against swearing and I do it as well. I find swearing at people who contribute to code off putting though.

Re: Linus Torvalds on aliasing

#173

Post by beaconstudios »

matt4077 wrote: post #35

I'm in no way offended by Torvalds' typical expletive-laden rants. But they do strike me as a terrible way to communicate. These outbursts seem to happen every few weeks, and have long seized to surprise. IF anything actually bad ever comes up, he has no further escalation available to raise awareness. It also reminds me of these choleric bosses screaming at someone every day: it's almost always a sign that they're i…

This is the actual reason his manner of communication is poor - swearing and generally blunt language like this should be reserved for shaking people into action, whether it's due to their otherwise ambivalent attitude or the severity of the situation. By making a big fuss for every moderate concern he has, he leaves few options open for when the situation demands that people spring into action.

Re: Linus Torvalds on aliasing

#174

Post by mosselman »

cryon wrote: post #141
mosselman wrote: post #119

I would go out of my way to avoid people who communicate like this with me. People put time and energy in making software better, at least in their own eyes, for others and then they get textually abused like this by someone who has his fame to protect himself with. He also does no service to his own arguments by peppering them with childish swearing because things like "So standards are not some kind of holy book th…

I can't stand when you're expected to wrap every sentence in some sugar coated fake 'niceness' just to not step on somebody's toes. If I have a certain way of expressing myself... Well that's how it is.

I didn't say that he should write:

'Hey, great that you took the time to contribute, here are a few suggestions though.'

I am talking about things like: 'If you think xyz, then you are a fucking moron'.

Re: Linus Torvalds on aliasing

#175

Post by ramblerman »

maxehmookau wrote: post #144
renox wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in my opinion there was nothing disrespectful in Linus'email (expect towards the standard people, but they truly did a big mistake..) so I wouldn't want to work with you as you seem 'overly sensitive'..

Big mistakes happen. Solutions to those mistakes are rarely found by publicly demonising those who made the mistake.

> publicly demonising those who made the mistake

But that isn't what is happening here at all. This code was merged. In fact Linus wasn't even yelling at the guy, rather the standards committee.

Just because you don't read 'atta boy, good job' doesn't mean it wasn't good. There was no mistake here.

In fact I'd be on your side if that is what he was doing.

Re: Linus Torvalds on aliasing

#176

Post by minipci1321 »

I never take these "what Linus just said" posts for their face value. To me, it sounds as a half-staged, half-talking-to-buddies, mostly good-natured grudges, for some reason I cannot explain. (That said, I am not contributing to kernel, my very first post to some kernel list got a much worse response for no good reason (not from Linus). It was enough.)

But I work in customer support of highly technical products, and I visit various companies very often. By now, I can figure this type of persons from the first communication -- not the ones who does it the way Linus does it (see above), but the real a&^%$%^$les -- owning some inner knowledge unavailable to others, just because they happened to be here from the bigbang and haven't evolved since. Boy, is this "rough but just and truthful" attitude counter-productive to projects! I haven't seen any exception to that yet.

Re: Linus Torvalds on aliasing

#177

Post by [deleted] »

alexkrycek wrote: post #157
ralfn wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it comes to being oversensitive needy little things there is no true Scottsman. As a northern European I find it not only comfortable that Linus runs Linux, but I would be less comfortable if it was another American smile in face pretend to be your friend but be shady as fuck attitude that you guys seem to confuse for 'professionalism'. So let's chalk this to cultural differences. We wouldn't hire someone like y…

If only us silly Americans talked so "honestly" with our wives: "Why did you cook this? Are you fucking stupid?" I'm in the military, and if you can't control what you say, you shouldn't be respected.

[deleted]

Re: Linus Torvalds on aliasing

#178

Post by boomlinde »

simias wrote: post #88
pubby wrote: post #34

To me, this rant seems more directed at C standards people than the guy he sent it to. That doesn't excuse his vitriol, but I hope people will read between the lines. Sometimes people forget that C was created for writing operating systems. They get in their mind that C is all about high-performance, and that making it competitive with FORTRAN is the way to go. I understand that, but it's not what C was created for.…

>C was created for writing operating systems That doesn't properly justify C's minefield around aliasing and type punning in general. It's UB galore. Thing is, whenever you're writing low level code that's tied to hardware in my experience you very often end up having to pun your types to match hardware constraints, and at this point the C standard basically says "lol good luck with that bro". I'm not a programming l…

Maybe I suck at reading the standard, but it seems that type punning via unions is defined in C99:

"If the member used to access the contents of a union object is not the same as the member last used to store a value in the object, the appropriate part of the object representation of the value is reinterpreted as an object representation in the new type as described in 6.2.6 (a process sometimes called "type punning")."

Re: Linus Torvalds on aliasing

#180

Post by ralfn »

mosselman wrote: post #169
ralfn wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it comes to being oversensitive needy little things there is no true Scottsman. As a northern European I find it not only comfortable that Linus runs Linux, but I would be less comfortable if it was another American smile in face pretend to be your friend but be shady as fuck attitude that you guys seem to confuse for 'professionalism'. So let's chalk this to cultural differences. We wouldn't hire someone like y…

What nonsense. I am Dutch and live in the Netherlands, we are very direct and take little to no heed to hierarchy. I never said that Linus should be fake friendly. I am saying that swearing does damage to moral and the power of his arguments. Also, Steve Jobs was a notorious asshole and he is revered in the US despite this. There are countless other examples of CEOs and managers who are more than unfriendly in the US…

Swearing doesn't damage morale. Many soccer coaches and inspiring pep talks contain swear words. It's a style figure.

Tact can be very usefull in small teams where trust and coordination is important.

For large projects, with thousands of stake holders the bar to participate in a conversation should be high.

As we both say in Holland: we are not made of sugar. But go read Linus rant now and ask yourself: would this really classify as an inappropriate rant in Holland? Or are you just, parroting the default (mostly from the US) critique on Linus?

Because this whole 'Linus isn't tactfull' is a false comparision. He is more approachable than any other person in that sort of position. Since there isn't a big filter at the door based on who somebody is but there is a verbal filter at the table. Very egalitarian if you ask me. Very Dutch like.

And our directness is often referred to as rude. It would look better on you to not blindly follow in that judgement when it concerns others.

For example: >Maybe you can chalk your reaction to your apparent false sense of superiority over friendliness and, it seems, Americans

If out of the mouth of Linus would be one of those 'look at how insensitive Linus is' posts. Something with the pot and the kettle.

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