Every time Linus Torvalds' rude behavior comes up on HN, people leap to his defense. Then, people leap on top of those people for leaping to his defense. Personally, I fall strongly in the "he's rude and annoying and should stop it" camp. For the sake of productive discussion, I'd like to list a few things that are not valid defenses to his dickishness: 1) "He's a visionary developer." Yes, but plenty of visionaries…
I find I get more from what other people contribute if I focus on what they say and mean, rather than how they say it. For instance, a Japanese person is used to a hierarchy of polite and formal modes of addressing people, but their hierarchy doesn't apply where I come from, but that doesn't mean they don't have anything useful to say, so I struggle a bit to ignore the frills. That burden is on me. Focus on the messa…
I argue that the most efficient, productive way to do that is to go a neutral course: Say what you mean, but don't insult or harass someone while doing it.
Bigler's piece strikes me as true and accurate, but at the same time, doesn't imply that nerds communicate by saying "hey, fuck you asshole, here's the way to X Y Z!" That is, I take it to mean conversations flow like this:
Nerd A says: "Idea X"
Nerd B says: "Idea X isn't right and definitely won't work."
Nerd A heard: "Nerd B doesn't think Idea X is right or will work."
Normal person heard: "Nerd B thinks my ideas are stupid."
not like this:
Nerd A says: "Idea X"
Nerd B says: "Fuck you, that's stupid, how could you EVER think idea X was good?! You're an idiot."
In this case, I think both Nerd A and Normal Person would be insulted. The discourse has become unnecessarily and unproductively personal. That's what Linus is doing. There's a difference between "direct"/"blunt" and "rude"/"insulting."