I 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 f

I 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.