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Linus Torvalds on aliasing

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Re: Linus Torvalds on aliasing

#191

Post by hfdgiutdryg »

qaq wrote: post #136
AnthonBerg wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PC? This is not politically correct, this is an opinion based on free will and self-respect. “I don’t want to volunteer where the boss is an abusive asshole.” By what definition is that PC?

using profanity and being "abusive asshole" are orthogonal concepts. I obviously do not encourage anyone to volunteer in projects they feel uncomfortable with.

using profanity and being "abusive asshole" are orthogonal concepts

In this sub-thread, you're the first one to bring up swearing.

Re: Linus Torvalds on aliasing

#192

Post by smhost »

ralfn wrote: post #180
mosselman wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

We get it, you have daddy issues.

edit: dumbass people actually defending this emotionally illiterate, developmentally challeneged child man.

Re: Linus Torvalds on aliasing

#193

Post by boomlinde »

TorKlingberg wrote: post #166
pubby wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>at the very least C should make reading from a different union member than was last written to "implementation defined" That's how it is :) The standard even describes union behavior as "type punning". I don't know if C++ allows it though.

Type punning through a union is allowed, buy you have to be careful so the compiler can see the union. union { int i; float f; } u; You can't safely call a function with pointers to the members like func(&u.i, &u.f), because when func was compiled, the compiler couldn't know that the arguments are pointers to union members. This sort of thing scares me, because what the compiler can "see" isn't well defined. Is it ok…

Assuming we're talking C, not C++, the compiler doesn't need to know that the arguments are pointers to union members, because the union members are all aligned with the union itself and have the same address. So &u.f is not some magic special pointer, it's the address of a float. So is (float *)&u. The example in the standard I think you're referring to relates to a special guarantee made about unions of structs that have a common initial sequence, that their common initial sequence can be read from either union member (AFAIK a guarantee not otherwise made about structs that share a common initial sequence).

If your func(&u.i &u.f) example fails it may be because the standard is picky about pointers of different types to the same memory. I have no idea whether it is, because I've never had to do anything like your example.

Re: Linus Torvalds on aliasing

#195

Post by alexkrycek »

ralfn wrote: post #184
alexkrycek wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In military terms Linus is the president of his world (the Linux kernel). In the military with all the hierarchy this wouldn't happen because no small private would be arrogant enough to throw their opinion in the top generals and president face without being asked. The whole point of the rudeness is that it does give space for people to voice their opinion irregardless of their rank. Only at the risk of being somewh…

The point is that swearing is not equal to honesty. It's just additional emotional metadata.

Re: Linus Torvalds on aliasing

#196

Post by alexkrycek »

AsyncAwait wrote: post #183
alexkrycek wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is not aimed at you specifically, but I find this decorum policing off punting. Like the U.S. military may be able to control what they say, but some of the things it has actually done are less than nice. I don't care that Linus swears, he hasn't invaded anyone or harmed anyone as far as I know. I don't care that Trump swears, I care about the stupid stuff he actually does . Linus may swear, but he also protects…

I didn't bring the military up to say that it's an authority on proper conduct.

Rather, I'm saying that EVEN in the military, with some of the most insensitive people around, swearing indicates lack of self-control and situational awareness.

Re: Linus Torvalds on aliasing

#197

Post by GuB-42 »

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…

Linus has answered that question about the way he communicates.

His idea is that he wants to make his feelings as clear as possible. He mentioned a case where some guy attempted suicide after working months on a kernel patch that he rejected. He blames himself for not being clear enough about what he felt about the idea before work has started.

When you say "People put time and energy in making software better, at least in their own eyes, for others and then they get textually abused". That's actually the whole point. Linus doesn't want you to put time and energy in what he perceives as a lost cause.

Not saying that what he does is good or bad, just saying what I think his rationale for using harsh language is.

Re: Linus Torvalds on aliasing

#198

Post by badpenny »

Kind of sad that a person as intelligent as him can get to his age and still not realise that talking to people that way is at best highly ineffective and at worst will make them actively hostile towards you. That's not to mention rude and mean-spirited.

Re: Linus Torvalds on aliasing

#199

Post by letsgetphysITal »

ralfn wrote: post #180
mosselman wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 r…

Swearing in general doesn't damage morale, but swearing at and verbally abusing someone does very much so. That's exactly the kind of treatment that would lead me, if I were a developer, to walk away from the project.

In fact, here's an edit which gets his point over in less words, and more clearly:

"Honestly, this looks questionable to me. [U]sing a union to do type punning is the traditional AND STANDARD way to do type punning in gcc. In fact, it is the documented way to do it for gcc. The fact is that gcc documents type punning through unions as the "right way". You may disagree with that, but using the [C] standard to push it - the same standard that came up with the completely mis-guided aliasing rules - is not a valid argument. his is why we use -fwrapv, -fno-strict-aliasing etc. The standard simply is not important, when it is in direct conflict with reality and reliable code generation.

So what's the _real_ reason for avoiding union aliasing?"

No swearing, no abuse, all points covered, less typing required. No talk of splinters.

Re: Linus Torvalds on aliasing

#200

Post by cpmouter »

kristianc wrote: post #168
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…

> 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'. This is a false dichotomy. Most of what Linus says would run foul of HN's guidelines - which I'll paraphrase here as "don't call someone an asshole before maki…

You'd be surprised to see how many comments are removed from HN by the mods each day. What you see here is not what HN users actually are.
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