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Linus Torvalds on aliasing

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Re: Linus Torvalds on aliasing

#261

Post by klagermkii »

emerged wrote: post #218
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which shows how pointless the rant was.

I have no problem with the rant, just question its emotional source (presumably negative emotion from other areas of his personal life)

If you have invested 20+ years of your life into a particular project, and you have someone doing something that you consider potentially harmful to it, could that not be enough to react angrily?

I don't see why it would need to be negative emotion sourced from another area of his life that is leaking out here.

You presumably have to be pretty emotionally invested in something to work on it that long as a hobby and only later as a job.

Re: Linus Torvalds on aliasing

#262

Post by coldtea »

hfdgiutdryg wrote: post #186
coldtea wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why should he NOT being rude? Has anyone ever answered him in the same way? Several, but no one that mattered enough with respect to Linux for his opinion to matter in return. His OS, his rules. Others can always fork it if they have an issue with that. It seems to have worked fine as a gatekeeping technique for the last 25+ years, even if it hurts some feelings. Linus goes for an in-the-trenches, rough camaraderie…

Linus goes for an in-the-trenches, rough camaraderie, approach He's an outright toxic and abusive person. Characterizing a lack of toxic, abusive behavior as "professional soft spoken cubicle workers approach" is disingenuous.

Well, if he was "outright toxic", then he would have had negative effects on the kernel development. Which I don't see happening.

So what people mean with that is not that he actually has a toxic effect, but that they dislike his tone.

Re: Linus Torvalds on aliasing

#263

Post by LaGrange »

mort96 wrote: post #59
LaGrange wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A celebrity who speaks with a highly authoritative voice whether they have any idea what they're talking about or not. Sounds about right.

Do you have a link to where Linus talks in a highly authoritative voice when he has yesn't idea what he's talking about? All the cases I've seen where he's talking in an authoritative voice have been about topics he's an expert in.

I mean, just google anytime he talks about security or licensing. And, frankly, people more expert on, say, C, than Torvalds, are dime a dozen. Okay, a large heap of dimes, but still. They just tend to swear less, and in the OP you can see them defering to him to deescalate the situation.

Re: Linus Torvalds on aliasing

#264

Post by IshKebab »

caf wrote: post #27

It's important to bear in mind that Linux isn't written in standard C - it's written in a dialect of C implemented by recent-ish versions of GCC (there is a particular minimum GCC version supported), with certain compiler switches. There's nothing wrong with this - it's an important enough project to be able to make those kinds of demands.

Nothing is really written in "standard C".

Re: Linus Torvalds on aliasing

#265

Post by favorited »

geocar wrote: post #116
saagarjha wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clang doesn't support every GCC extension, though. For example, nested functions is something that it doesn't do.

Yup. And that one is a deal-breaker for me. Nested functions is exactly how you would write it in assembly. Does anyone know why clang won't support them? "Blocks" are fucking stupid.

Because throwing a trampoline on an executable stack is a hack and a glaring exploitation vector.

http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/cfe-dev/2015-September/04503...

Re: Linus Torvalds on aliasing

#267

Post by JakeTyo »

coldtea wrote: post #262
hfdgiutdryg wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linus goes for an in-the-trenches, rough camaraderie, approach He's an outright toxic and abusive person. Characterizing a lack of toxic, abusive behavior as "professional soft spoken cubicle workers approach" is disingenuous.

Well, if he was "outright toxic", then he would have had negative effects on the kernel development. Which I don't see happening. So what people mean with that is not that he actually has a toxic effect, but that they dislike his tone.

This is a malformed argument.

Having a 'toxic' personality does not mean he will produce bad code. Two completely different things.

Re: Linus Torvalds on aliasing

#268

Post by comex »

loa-in-backup wrote: post #152
ufo wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Putting a field of type 'struct Base' adds extra padding in my case, unfortunately.

I believe there is a way to disable field alignment on a case-by-case basis. I could be wrong, though.

Yes, there's the GCC extension __attribute__((packed)), or #pragma pack, an extension supported by both GCC-style compilers and MSVC.

Re: Linus Torvalds on aliasing

#269

Post by Gibbon1 »

richmarr wrote: post #134
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.…

Except "strong opinions" is not what happened here. He's being verbally abusive. I think it'd be helpful to be able to talk about this behaviour without needing to suger-coat it as "opinions". There are far less damaging ways to say exactly the same things as Tovalds says, and someone with his position in the community should know better. Punch up if you like, not down.

I think he's not really ranting at the guy submitting the patch. He's ranting at the the c standard committee and the compiler maintainers with their optimization fetish[1]. While at the same time redrawing a line in the sand.

[1] It's an open secret that most of the optimizations introduced in the last ten years provide no real benefit while making programs harder to reason about and trust. While at the same time the gcc backend is a trashfire. Hint, Microsoft's VC compiler produces better assembly code without any of these 'optimizations'

Re: Linus Torvalds on aliasing

#270

Post by angry_octet »

alexkrycek wrote: post #245
angry_octet wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You haven't spent much time with the military have you? Swearing is a delicate and beautiful art form, more expressive and nuanced that the dry words of HN.

Eight years, which included serving as a PSG then joining the dark side. Obviously swearing is a big thing, but not when leading. You'll have exceptions with some of the line units of course, but that's a culture that won't change. If I saw one of my squad leaders cursing at someone for doing something dumb, then I'd know that supposed leader just failed that Soldier. At ease those emotions, get your point across, an…

There is a difference between swearing and having, as you put it, a hissy fit. Not all swearing is demeaning behaviour, and plenty of people lose their shit without swearing (oops I said shit).
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