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Linus and Pull Requests (2012)

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Re: Linus and Pull Requests (2012)

#31

Post by paulmd »

andrewzah wrote: post #11
phist_mcgee wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what purpose does that antagonism serve? I fundamentally reject the way linus treats people, and I think him hiding behind his maintainer position is even more petty. A lord of his kingdom, rude and sarcastic to everyone who comes and visits. I will never accept someone as hostile as he is in my workplace, and I think the only way he gets away with it, is by surrounding himself with other people who express thems…

Reminder that Linus is part of the reason you and I have a job in the first place. How many people contribute to the linux kernel? Let’s see how quickly you get jaded after dealing with people refusing to read basic instructions. Also, reminder that not every contributor is desirable. Linus has a specific vision and criteria for his project. It’s true he could use kinder language, but I imagine he gets fed up having…

> Reminder that Linus is part of the reason you and I have a job in the first place.

yikes, operating systems existed before linus.

Re: Linus and Pull Requests (2012)

#32

Post by nfoz »

alxmng wrote: post #19

Hard line wraps are moronic, just like spaces for tabs. It’s an abuse of the newline character, which is meant to represent a new line, not word wrapping. It also destroys the information of where actual newlines are placed. There’s no way to automatically strip out the newlines meant for word wrapping, while leaving newlines meant for new lines. To use your words Linus: You’re a moron!

> It’s an abuse of the newline character, which is meant to represent a new line

I also disagree with hard line wraps, but I wouldn't use this justification.

There isn't really such thing as a newline character. From ASCII we have line-feed and carriage-return characters intended for typewriters. There are conventions for how to interpret these as hard line-breaks in text, but they vary by platform. But even once you've picked how to represent your "new line" character -- does it denote a "line separator" (windows), or just a "line ending" (linux)? There's no real answer; just convention. (The difference often shows up when you consider whether you should leave one after the last line at the end of the document.)

We can't often look at ASCII or much of Unicode and ask "what is the meaning of this character" as if there's some canonical truth. IMO

Re: Linus and Pull Requests (2012)

#33

Post by ben0x539 »

andrewzah wrote: post #11
phist_mcgee wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what purpose does that antagonism serve? I fundamentally reject the way linus treats people, and I think him hiding behind his maintainer position is even more petty. A lord of his kingdom, rude and sarcastic to everyone who comes and visits. I will never accept someone as hostile as he is in my workplace, and I think the only way he gets away with it, is by surrounding himself with other people who express thems…

Reminder that Linus is part of the reason you and I have a job in the first place. How many people contribute to the linux kernel? Let’s see how quickly you get jaded after dealing with people refusing to read basic instructions. Also, reminder that not every contributor is desirable. Linus has a specific vision and criteria for his project. It’s true he could use kinder language, but I imagine he gets fed up having…

Getting jaded is a good excuse for taking a step back and reevaluating your life choices, and maybe finding another hobby. It's not a good excuse for going out of your way to hurt the feelings of people who aren't measuring up to your standards.

Re: Linus and Pull Requests (2012)

#34

Post by mrbadideas »

This is a prime example of the white supremacy that runs rampant in the American technology culture. A white man is allowed to emotionally abuse people because of his privilege's. This type of behavior perpetuates a toxic white masculine culture that makes it impossible to create safe spaces for BIPOC in technology.

Re: Linus and Pull Requests (2012)

#35

Post by alexmingoia »

dmart wrote: post #26
alxmng wrote: post #19

Hard line wraps are moronic, just like spaces for tabs. It’s an abuse of the newline character, which is meant to represent a new line, not word wrapping. It also destroys the information of where actual newlines are placed. There’s no way to automatically strip out the newlines meant for word wrapping, while leaving newlines meant for new lines. To use your words Linus: You’re a moron!

In the general case, I agree (with the first part of your comment.) But Linus makes a valid case for wrapping at the time of text entry instead of display: they want to wrap to 72 characters except in certain, specific cases, like when you have lines of output that should be represented verbatim. Now, if you're using something like Markdown, this is no problem: triple-backtick the code block and let the rest of the r…

I disagree. There’s no valid use case. Users can word wrap lines at any width they want, easily.

Re: Linus and Pull Requests (2012)

#36

Post by [deleted] »

fermienrico wrote: post #5
ivraatiems wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is like going to Quentin Tarantino and saying "hey Quentin, here's that work you need for your film, which I did for free," and him screaming at you for not doing your free work exactly how he wanted. Linus has often been a dick. Being offended at being abused for asking a question or doing a relatively normal thing is reasonable. (He's gotten better, recently, because even he acknowledges it's harmed the pr…

People still work with him and he is successful. From what I can see (I've never dealt with Linux community), people that work with him know what to ignore and what to listen to. Moreover, I guess I have a different way to deal with offensive people even if they were serious - to ignore and scoff it off. I would never feel "offended" ever . Offense is taken and it is a choice. That's how I operate but your mileage ma…

[deleted]

Re: Linus and Pull Requests (2012)

#37

Post by andrewzah »

paulmd wrote: post #31
andrewzah wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminder that Linus is part of the reason you and I have a job in the first place. How many people contribute to the linux kernel? Let’s see how quickly you get jaded after dealing with people refusing to read basic instructions. Also, reminder that not every contributor is desirable. Linus has a specific vision and criteria for his project. It’s true he could use kinder language, but I imagine he gets fed up having…

> Reminder that Linus is part of the reason you and I have a job in the first place. yikes, operating systems existed before linus.

Imagine reducing the impact of linux/git/etc to merely an operating system.

Re: Linus and Pull Requests (2012)

#38

Post by alexmingoia »

nfoz wrote: post #32
alxmng wrote: post #19

Hard line wraps are moronic, just like spaces for tabs. It’s an abuse of the newline character, which is meant to represent a new line, not word wrapping. It also destroys the information of where actual newlines are placed. There’s no way to automatically strip out the newlines meant for word wrapping, while leaving newlines meant for new lines. To use your words Linus: You’re a moron!

> It’s an abuse of the newline character, which is meant to represent a new line I also disagree with hard line wraps, but I wouldn't use this justification. There isn't really such thing as a newline character. From ASCII we have line-feed and carriage-return characters intended for typewriters. There are conventions for how to interpret these as hard line-breaks in text, but they vary by platform. But even once you…

Whichever character is used for a line ending/separator, it’s still wrong to conflate it with word wrapping.

Re: Linus and Pull Requests (2012)

#39

Post by [deleted] »

drenvuk wrote: post #29
danielsht wrote: post #15

Reasonable people can disagree on things like formatting, features, or the superiority of one interface/product over another... all fair game. And Linus’ contributions give him an enormous amount of credibility and leeway to have it his way. But when you treat people with such disrespect (ex. By calling them a moron), you lose all credibility and respect in my book. There should be no excuse for treating people with…

You sound like a middle manager to me. The people at the bottom or top don't worry about this crap and will call a spade a spade.

[deleted]

Re: Linus and Pull Requests (2012)

#40

Post by ben0x539 »

bigyikes wrote: post #14
dmart wrote: post #10

This was an interesting comment thread, and honestly you have to hand it to Linus for continuing to respond and expand on his viewpoints in a pretty level-headed way. Also, I was reading through it on a phone, which brought to light an interesting point regarding the hard line-wrapping discussion that occurs further on down the thread: when you hard-wrap your lines, you're also defining a minimum line width, under wh…

Was he level-headed? Talking like that at work might get me fired. It would be better if he just ignored the PR instead of making a scene. Maybe I’m just sensitive

I could see giving Torvalds credit for taking the time to engage in a discussion here at all. It's not an acceptable way to talk to people, but it's clearly putting a lot of effort into actually making people understand his reasoning and clarifying in followup comments etc.
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