I don't know, I find a lot of engineers to actually be really sensitive. Confident and nice people can hold their ground and maintain civility in a disagreement

I don't know, I find a lot of engineers to actually be really sensitive. Confident and nice people can hold their ground and maintain civility in a disagreement without devolving into name-calling, questioning someone's character, or question someone's abilities because they don't agree on how to implement a process (be it in software, hardware, or something more mechanical). Adding a large ego onto being sensitive makes for a very unpleasant and volatile combination. It causes them to take disagreement personally and then it becomes a religious discussion along the lines of vim vs emacs (obviously vim is superior and if you think otherwise, go back to sociology you moron). I think Linus is just like that. That's my two bits.