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That's a really interesting post, and I'm glad I read it. I find myself agreeing with Linus quite a bit, and until now I did not realize that there is programmi

That's a really interesting post, and I'm glad I read it. I find myself agreeing with Linus quite a bit, and until now I did not realize that there is programming being done without step by step debugging. And I think Linus's claims that people would be more careful when first designing and writing code if they didn't have a debugger to help them going forward makes a lot of sense. Unfortunately I work with too many people whose approach to programming is "Read spec, code, debug why code isn't working to spec, fix that specific bug". Design, architecture, etc. are simply not part of the process. I can see how a lack of easy debugging may force some forethought into the development process. That being said, how valid would this be in a development environment (like the kernel) where a lot of the work you are doing is making changes designed and created by someone else? Linus says the solution is to make sure you were careful at the start. But what if you weren't even there at the start, and had to step in later?

vezzy-fnord 11y ago
The point is his view about kernel debuggers is complete nonsense, and I'm baffled that you and so many others could ever take it seriously. Yes, people would be more careful without debuggers, the same way they'd be more careful with cooperative multitasking hanging the system when they forget to yield. That doesn't make it good.
- serge2k 11y ago
  Quite often I read posts by Linus and find myself unable to take him seriously. He's arrogant, abrasive, and some of his opinions (security, debuggers apparently) are ridiculous.
  - xorblurb 11y ago
    Honestly Linus is a genius about the social side of big projects. He managed to scale Linux development very well, even writing Git in the middle. About the technical parts in their epoch context, it is more mixed: technically before 2.6 versions the kernel had far too many architectural flaw to be considered for serious workloads (even if I enjoyed using it even from the 2.0 series); and today I actually don't know of a single programmer around me that think he is right about the approach of security. On the other hand he was one of the first high profile programmer to call the modern interpretation of C undefined behaviors by modern compiler writers insane. But at least the beginning technical shortcomings could be explained because Linux kernel hackers of that time were unexperimented, and they actually several times silently learned from (some) NT designs and/or maybe big Unixes of that epoch (probably mainly Solaris) and adapted them not a too long time after trolling about why their previous simpler one was good enough (when it was clearly not). The security approach today coming from people having work that long in the industry is inexplicable. (maybe it is just to early and they will just silently convert to reasonable opinions in 2016? :p )
  - vacri 11y ago
    No, he's not. He is a little arrogant - it's hard to be such a significant tech lead without being so - but if you actually read what he writes, he's not actually that abrasive. What happens is that some sensationalist idiot will see Torvalds lose his patience and post an angry retort to someone, and post just that response to places like HN, completely out of context. I've lost count of the number of times it's happened here, when everyone's tutting about Torvalds' behaviour and how he's "so aggressive right out of the gate", when no-one looks at the thread history to see him being patient and explaining things. In any case, zero of the tech heads from Jobs on down satisfy your demands to be taken seriously. I really don't understand why Torvalds gets held to this higher standard of hippie-level friendliness when people don't expect the same from other major tech project managers. I mean hell, Jobs was adored for having opinions that people considered ridiculous.
- paulddraper 11y ago
  And how people would be more careful drivers of you replaced airbags with a metal spike. You would wind up with more careful drivers, but anyone who thinks that's the only goal is misguided.
  - krick 11y ago
    I think the better analogy would be driving with a very very dirty windshield. Or a slippery stealing wheel. It's not that absence of debugger would make you (in Linus' opinion) more careful because it's risky, but because it's really inconvenient.
- vacri 11y ago
  And yet the kernel that he has created and is developed with his methods, it runs on the greatest variety of systems, from toasters right up to being the predominant OS in the top 500 supercomputers (by a wide margin).

vezzy-fnord 11y ago

The point is his view about kernel debuggers is complete nonsense, and I'm baffled that you and so many others could ever take it seriously. Yes, people would be more careful without debuggers, the same way they'd be more careful with cooperative multitasking hanging the system when they forget to yield. That doesn't make it good.

serge2k 11y ago
Quite often I read posts by Linus and find myself unable to take him seriously. He's arrogant, abrasive, and some of his opinions (security, debuggers apparently) are ridiculous.
- xorblurb 11y ago
  Honestly Linus is a genius about the social side of big projects. He managed to scale Linux development very well, even writing Git in the middle. About the technical parts in their epoch context, it is more mixed: technically before 2.6 versions the kernel had far too many architectural flaw to be considered for serious workloads (even if I enjoyed using it even from the 2.0 series); and today I actually don't know of a single programmer around me that think he is right about the approach of security. On the other hand he was one of the first high profile programmer to call the modern interpretation of C undefined behaviors by modern compiler writers insane. But at least the beginning technical shortcomings could be explained because Linux kernel hackers of that time were unexperimented, and they actually several times silently learned from (some) NT designs and/or maybe big Unixes of that epoch (probably mainly Solaris) and adapted them not a too long time after trolling about why their previous simpler one was good enough (when it was clearly not). The security approach today coming from people having work that long in the industry is inexplicable. (maybe it is just to early and they will just silently convert to reasonable opinions in 2016? :p )
- vacri 11y ago
  No, he's not. He is a little arrogant - it's hard to be such a significant tech lead without being so - but if you actually read what he writes, he's not actually that abrasive. What happens is that some sensationalist idiot will see Torvalds lose his patience and post an angry retort to someone, and post just that response to places like HN, completely out of context. I've lost count of the number of times it's happened here, when everyone's tutting about Torvalds' behaviour and how he's "so aggressive right out of the gate", when no-one looks at the thread history to see him being patient and explaining things. In any case, zero of the tech heads from Jobs on down satisfy your demands to be taken seriously. I really don't understand why Torvalds gets held to this higher standard of hippie-level friendliness when people don't expect the same from other major tech project managers. I mean hell, Jobs was adored for having opinions that people considered ridiculous.
paulddraper 11y ago
And how people would be more careful drivers of you replaced airbags with a metal spike. You would wind up with more careful drivers, but anyone who thinks that's the only goal is misguided.
- krick 11y ago
  I think the better analogy would be driving with a very very dirty windshield. Or a slippery stealing wheel. It's not that absence of debugger would make you (in Linus' opinion) more careful because it's risky, but because it's really inconvenient.
vacri 11y ago
And yet the kernel that he has created and is developed with his methods, it runs on the greatest variety of systems, from toasters right up to being the predominant OS in the top 500 supercomputers (by a wide margin).