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Linus Torvalds: Successful projects are 99% perspiration and 1% innovation
- sanifsdd 10y agoDo you utilize a paypal account.. in the event if you do you can get an extra 950 every week to your income just working at home 2 hours each day... see... http://bit.ly/2atnA1a http://bit.ly/2atnA1a
- douche 10y agoHear hear! Linus really is the patron saint of grumpy, cynical engineers. There's nothing more frustrating than listening to the bullshit artist spin castles made out of air, knowing that you're the poor son-of-a-gun that's going to have to do the hard work to make it actually happen, and get blamed when reality intrudes on the grand vision. Also closes with a great quote. Code is easy, it's either right or it's wrong. People are the sticky wicket > It's almost boring how well our process works," Torvalds said. "All the really stressful times for me have been about process. They haven't been about code. When code doesn't work, that can actually be exciting ... Process problems are a pain in the ass. You never, ever want to have process problems ... That's when people start getting really angry at each other.
- DigitalJack 10y ago"Also closes with a great quote. Code is easy, it's either right or it's wrong. People are the sticky wicket" When I read that I got the feeling that people were thinking to themselves "it either executes or has an error," but that is certainly not the case when Linus deems code right or wrong. Obviously not executing is an automatic disqualification. Two patches can correctly execute and achieve the same goal, and yet one will be deemed "brain dead" and "moronic" and the other be deemed "right," solely on the subjective whims of Linus. Totally his prerogative, and I have no issue with it. But don't think for a minute that code is "black and white."
- theprotocol 10y agoIt takes all kinds. I say this seriously and without intent to offend: it's good to have a grouchy curmudgeon in the industry to keep us grounded.
- richmarr 10y agoThank goodness for that one specific grouchy curmudgeon, otherwise there would be no grouchy curmudgeons and we'd all live like Eloi and waste the days away braiding each others hair :)
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- soneca 10y agoThe strong words of the title are not the relevant or interesting part of the article (presumably of the talk also). The success in managing the network of kernel collaborators seems to be the real story here. "It's a social project," said Torvalds. "It's about technology and the technology is what makes people able to agree on issues, because ... there's usually a fairly clear right and wrong." EDIT: Just for context, HN thankfully edited the title. When I wrote this the post was using the article's title: "Talk of tech innovation is bullsh*t. Shut up and get the work done – says Linus Torvalds"
- oska 10y agoI preferred the original title. But I agree that the main point of the article is Linus' efforts in mastering (collaborative) process.
- whsheet 10y agoI like the header and experimented with current trends: - Talk of AI is bullshit. Shut up and get the work done. - Talk of Machine Learning is bullshit. Shut up and get the work done. - Talk of VR is bullshit. Shut up and get the work done. - Talk of Smart Contracts is bullshit. Shut up and get the work done. - Talk of IoT is bullshit. Shut up and get the work done. Not sure if I entirely agree with him but there's some truth.
- avip 10y agoBlockchain is missing.
- indexerror 10y agoSmart Contracts kind of covers it.
- daemin 10y agoI assumed that Smart Contracts are built on top of the Blockchain.
- erdojo 10y agoThese trends are either evolutionary or entirely predictable. Several so predictable that they first made their debut in movies long before most of us were born. I think this is what he means. Working on any of these ideas doesn't make you an innovator. You might do something in a slightly better or more novel way, but we aren't inventing crap. And if you don't execute on your slightly better path, you'll still be beat by someone with a slightly worse idea who buckled down and delivered. Silicon Valley is littered with companies with better ideas and better base products that lost.
- theprotocol 10y agoThe adage "we stand on the shoulders of giants" comes to mind. Some of the louder people in our industry could stand to remember this. In truth, there are no giants (or maybe very few). Even the giants of the adage are actually made up of innumerable little people supporting each other.
- anjc 10y agoSomeone who should be a multi billionaire says to ignore marketing and sales and just work. Edit: I'm not saying that he WANTS to be a multi billionaire, but the fact is that he has attained disproportionately less value than he's created. By rights he should be one of the wealthiest people in tech. He might have 150m but that's peanuts given what he's done. The wealth of the guy who made Instagram dwarfs that. The guy who made Whatsapp has a net worth of 8b. Creation might be 90% perspiration as he says, but perspiration doesn't equal success, and success doesn't equal a career. Obviously everything isn't about money, and Torvald's legacy will be timeless. But if you want to ensure earnings, at some point it's a good idea to sell.
- gue5t 10y agoIf you think money is important you aren't a hacker.
- akappa 10y agoAn ironic thing to say in a seed accelerator-owned website.
- Gracana 10y agoI think there's a sizable camp of HN members who just come here to read the various interesting tech articles, with no plans to join the cult of SV.
- laser 10y agoMoney is a tool in a hacker's kit like any other. If you don't recognize the importance of useful tools you aren't a hacker ;)
- pyrale 10y agoA tool is not important. A tool is just a tool.
- calebm 10y ago
- altitudinous 10y agoUpvote 1000x - I'm sick of hearing people who've done nothing and "thought leaders" ranting on. I'm pleased I put my head down, did work and did something that worked for me that I can encourage others with and give evidence. I wish those who have done nothing would go away - and stop filling my inbox, and targeted advertising spots, and meetups with their crap. I wish I could help others see over the shouting and point to what does work instead of seeing them fall for the hype every time.
- richmarr 10y agoMany people work in marketing in some way or other, and that work fulfils an important function. I'm not particularly thrilled about it either, but we don't currently operate in a perfect information market and human bandwidth needs to be used to propogate ideas. Rage on it if you like, but you're yelling against the wind. My recommendation would be to save your blood pressure.
- lr4444lr 10y agoAs long as everyone knows their place. I've found that the people - who add nothing more than their opining, expounding, and big promises but confuse having a core idea for the sweat that forges it into reality - to be lazy, parasitic, and dishonest manipulators of the worst sort who look at the people doing the real work as their instrument. To me, no one is more irksome in a business, and when they have equity it's an injustice I simply can't tolerate.
- koheripbal 10y agoMarketers also have the 99% / 1% rule. They aren't coming up with new marketing slogans all day long. They come up with 1 good idea per quarter and then go through the painstaking process of fleshing it out, testing it with groups, presenting it to management, getting design teams to execute, managing a project/budget/schedule, etc... This is a general human rule that most people spend WAY too much time criticizing the effort of those of us who are working.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- aiNohY6g 10y ago> Torvalds said he subscribes to the view that successful projects are 99 per cent perspiration, and one per cent innovation Certainly true. IMHO, innovation is about orientation, while perspiration is about walking. They live in different timescales: GTD takes time while innovation is a spark. However, both are equally important: it would be useless to go forward in a wrong direction, it would be useless to identify a meaningful direction without going forward, and it would be of course useless to walk backward. An acceptable - and subjective ! - balance is hard to find, these days.
- gbrown_ 10y agoThe OpenBSD folk have a similar (and surprisingly polite) motto of "Put up or hack up" which I've always been fond of.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- frederikvs 10y agoIt's funny how he says "Don't do this big 'think different'... screw that", apparently without realising that Apple did exactly what he's talking about. Almost all of Apple's big innovations were stolen from other places, and then they shut up, and got to work : making it work properly, making it user friendly, making it sexy, and then selling it. Apple's slogan may have been "think different", and they have the image of being radical innovators, but hardly any of their innovations actually originated with them. Apple is 99% perspiration and 1% stealing good ideas :-) There's even an infographic : http://mashable.com/2012/10/27/apple-stolen-ideas/#Fs4Q5gSS.ZqF http://mashable.com/2012/10/27/apple-stolen-ideas/#Fs4Q5gSS....
- edblarney 10y agoThey didn't steal anything, they often entered markets that others were already in, as most companies do, and often they did it better. The iPod was evolutionary. The iPhone - their #1 source of revenue - was a fairly big leap forward. 'Think Different' is a marketing slogan, not a modus operandi.
- DigitalJack 10y agoFrom NPR: "When is copying flattery, when is it thievery, and when is it sheer genius? In this hour, TED speakers explore how sampling, borrowing, and riffing make all of us innovators." http://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/321797073/what-is-original http://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/321797073/what-is...
- deepaksurti 10y agoPicasso said "Good artists copy, great artists steal" which is quoted again by Steve Jobs. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW0DUg63lqU Even to do something like a simple library and to publish it professionally will need `high quality`: code, tests, documentation (user/developer/guides), examples at a minimum. Basically the long tail of polishing is that 80% perspiration, 19% perspiration is to get to the stage (MVP may be) where you get on to polish it and that 1% innovation is when you kick your backside to get going!
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- bananarepdev 10y agoI deeply respect and admire Torvalds, but in the corporate world, the hypey/trendy thing helps tech people getting important changes approved by upper management, at least in my experience. I work in a tech company whose culture is primarily driven to productivity (read: getting business features delivered using the established stack and tools, as quick as possible). There is certainly an upside to it, but it produced a mindset in wich, in the face of a new problem, developers didn't even think of the possibility of bringing another tool to the toolbox. I mean seriously, to the extent of building their own xml parsers. Only recently we have been able to assemble an architecture team (i know, i hate the concept) to actually find adequate solutions to the bigger issues, and the hype is sometimes a powerful enabler to push things forward.
- Seanny123 10y agoI never thought of it that way. Thanks for the insight.
- waynecolvin 10y agoTraditionally big corporations, or anybody with legacy systems, are very conservative with technology choices...
- laichzeit0 10y agoIt's a good thing. Imagine if they built something with Angular Material Design or Material Design Lite, for example.
- humanrebar 10y agoHow did you get an architecture team assembled? How does it help people make better decisions?
- tylercubell 10y agoChris Anderson: So you spoke to me last week about these two guys. Who are they and how do you relate to them? Linus Torvalds: Well, so this is kind of cliché in technology, the whole Tesla versus Edison, where Tesla is seen as the visionary scientist and crazy idea man. And people love Tesla. I mean, there are people who name their companies after him. The other person there is Edison, who is actually often vilified for being kind of pedestrian and is — I mean, his most famous quote is, "Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration." And I'm in the Edison camp, even if people don't always like him. Because if you actually compare the two, Tesla has kind of this mind grab these days, but who actually changed the world? Edison may not have been a nice person, he did a lot of things — he was maybe not so intellectual, not so visionary. But I think I'm more of an Edison than a Tesla. http://www.ted.com/talks/linus_torvalds_the_mind_behind_linux/transcript?language=en http://www.ted.com/talks/linus_torvalds_the_mind_behind_linu...
- popee 10y agoTesla worked for Edison and was a person who could finish things and some of them changed the world. He was also person with vision, so I think Linus is either wrong or he is trying to put emphasis only on hard work. What if you have person like Tesla with both qualities?
- oska 10y ago> What if you have person like Tesla with both qualities? Like Elon Musk for example (who Torvalds seems to be making a gentle dig at, in the quote above).
- thomasmarriott 10y agoFuck yea.
- Gibbon1 10y agoJa cause if you tried 2% innovation you'd need 198% perspiration to go with it.
- wackro 10y agoWisdom
- simo7 10y agoThis is one of those statements that end up being understood in slightly (but significant) different ways based on one's own experience.
- arc_of_descent 10y agoI would look at it as the Zeno's arrow paradox. 99% perspiration could be again broken down into 1% inspiration/innovation, and 99% perspiration, and so on... We need innovation simply because its fun.
- hacker_9 10y agoIs it just me, or is this a predictable answer from someone who works exclusively on an operating system? There is no innovation needed in his job, everything has already been made by MS, Apple etc, he just has to take existing ideas and fit them into Linux. Or even write the code that glues pieces together. Now ask someone in the VR/AR department. Everyday they have to think up is new 'innovative' ideas because they are on the bleeding edge. We know innovation is needed because so far not everything is working. What about Neural Nets, where there have been a lot of innovations to get from one one 'neuron' to what we now call deep learning. And the list goes on.
- devonkim 10y agoInvention and innovation are two different things that get conflated together frequently, but innovation doesn't necessarily mean you have to come up with something from scratch, but it does mean that you'll have to improve something. Maybe it's more like all (successful) inventors are innovators and some innovators are successful inventors. Sometimes it is the execution of the invention that was done wrong rather than the concept itself - there's absolutely value to society there. People get PhDs for finding commonalities across different disciplines and uniting them under common terms. Hence, because of the massive surface area of what constitutes innovation compared to invention, business people and others with more visibility are typically "innovators."
- avisk 10y agoCheckout this tweet from John Carmack, who approves this quote : https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/832215292180840448 https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/832215292180840448
- zomg 10y agolinus troll status = epic
- jest7325 10y agoGenius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration. - Thomas Edison It's not so original and it sounds like it was copied/pasted from an old quote 100 years ago
- analog31 10y agoI suspect the original Edison quote is so widely familiar, that a conspicuous modification is a sort of play on words that doesn't require citing the original.
- pythonaut_16 10y agoLinus literally talks about Edison and that quote in the article
- waynecolvin 10y agoTrust is earned, Linus is right.
- throw2016 10y agoThis is a social political problem especially with 'exceptionalism'. People adapt to the environment they are in, that's one thing human beings are good at. In the US there is intense pressure right from school to colleges to work to be 'exceptional', and to be recognized and celebrated for it. There is nothing necessarily wrong, excellence is worth pursuing and to have individuals believe they can achieve it. But there is a huge difference between motivation by passion and interest and motivation by social recognition and celebration. There are pitfalls and side effects in a society from a toxic focus on 'winners' and 'losers', constant judgement, politics and one upmanship, the ability of people to work together without the need for self congratulation and diminishing the collective. It takes a village and all. Excellence always comes through, you don't need to do anything special, individuals who are brilliant will always shine in a self evident way without labels or self congratulation via their work, throughout history and now and in the future. But you can't progress alone, progress comes from a generational interlinked collective, and there is huge risk of diminishing the collective and brushing every other factor under the carpet by an extreme focus on individuals.
- happy-go-lucky 10y ago> "All that hype is not where the real work is," said Torvalds. "The real work is in the details." That's where the real work is, in the details. I respect those who walk the talk and he's one among them.
- khana 10y agoAlthough I'd hate to work directly/closely w/ Linus, I truly love this man symbolically.
- davexunit 10y agoInvention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple.
- JoeAltmaier 10y agoBeer and chocolate in there somewhere?
- LordKano 10y ago"That's 105%!" - Mrs. Teevee
- Mieaou 10y agoand 99% sex.
- AceyMan 10y agowrt the rewritten HN headline, I've begun to prefer a different quip also attributed to Edison— "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." +1 for that take on innovation.
- singaraja 10y agocan 99% perspiration be automated with 1% innovation?
- bingeboy 10y agoYoga is 99% practice and 1% theory. K. Pattabhi Jois
- bingeboy 10y agoYoga is 99% practice and 1% theory. – K. Pattabhi Jois
- mwfunk 10y agoI think we're all reading lots of different things into what Linus said here. My interpretation is that he's just saying that we tend to overvalue ideas and undervalue the less glamorous work involved in bringing those ideas to fruition. The Tesla vs. Edison narrative is always couched in terms of the idea guy vs. the more pragmatic (perhaps more business-oriented) guy, not unlike the popular Woz vs. Jobs narrative, or the Jobs vs. Gates narrative in the '80s. These are popular narratives and archetypes that reflect the people involved, but can lead people to mythologizing history rather than understanding it. In a different field, Lennon vs. McCartney. So, among my peers at least, conventional wisdom is that Tesla was 100% an amazing visionary and got screwed over by unfair forces of history, and Edison was the villain whose contributions are overrated by historians. There's some truth there, but more than anything else it's a historical narrative where people are slotting Tesla and Edison into archetypes. When a lot of people talk about Tesla vs. Edison, they're really just talking about those archetypes, and revealing to what degree they value inspiration vs. perspiration. I think that's all Linus is doing here, saying that in his mind perspiration is undervalued and inspiration is overvalued among his peers. I don't think he's really trying to make a historical argument, which is what a lot of the commenters here are assuming.
- smarpidity 10y agoI agree with your interpretation, "he's just saying that we tend to overvalue ideas and undervalue the less glamorous work involved in bringing those ideas to fruition." I would also add, Torvalds is an enchanted unicorn from a resume perspective, it's not like he has followed a typical FOSS career trajectory, so seriously, what does he know --> that you can put to use? It's like a beautiful young woman telling you how you can get just a warning instead of a speeding ticket next time, just do what she does (except if you follow Linus's lead you will definitely get the speeding ticket) Humans have a built in instinct to follow great leaders, but if you are not a great leader yourself, emulating them might not actually work for you. I have tremendous respect for Linus and for the HN community; I'm just saying, let's use critical thinking. There are plenty of successful super lightweight coding projects; he works on kernel level OS for a huge legacy of hardwares; he already was first to market, you still need to be, it's always tradeoffs. Borrowing/paraphrasing an idea from finance or population genetics, maybe the world is the way it is because that's the right mix, why believe you know a better way to a greater extent than your already believing so is already part of the right mix? so, I'm not saying don't think, reflect and improve, I'm saying don't throw yourself into these debates all on one side. One size doesn't fit all.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- mrlyc 10y agoGood grief, not that again. One of Edison's contemporaries said that Edison would have found a working lightbulb faster if he had put more thought into his investigations. What works for me is a series of plan -> do -> review sequences with about 10 to 15% planning, 80 to 85% doing and 5 to 10% reviewing.
- jondubois 10y agoIt's 99% luck, 0.99% perspiration and 0.01% innovation.
- Animats 10y agoOf course he says that. His project was a clone of something that already existed, Unix.
- chiefalchemist 10y agoIn the context of consumers, no one wakes up and thinks, "I gotta buy me some innovation today." NO. ONE. People just want their problems solved. That is the target. Sure, innovation might be part of the means, but innovation is not an ends (as it's often framed to be). p.s. As a side-snark...Enough already about all these various dev technologies. So they enable still-shitty user experiences? So what. No one says, "Oh. I love they use _____." Users. Don't. Care. So please, for the love of God & country, stop stroking yourself with your shiny new (dev technology) object. No one cares. The technology is a means. The experience is the ends. Stop focusing on the wrong problem. Please?