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> Are people - especially young and impressionable developers - able to separate the two sides of the coin As a young coder, I remember reading these linus old

> Are people - especially young and impressionable developers - able to separate the two sides of the coin As a young coder, I remember reading these linus oldtime posts as an exhilarating breath of fresh air. Everyone around me was all-in about "object orientation" and similar bullshit. When I say everyone I mean it: there was not a single person that suggested even a hint of hypothetical disagreement on software engineering mantra. Thus, it was refreshing to read these posts and realize that there existed, after all, another side of the coin. We should not be afraid that young and impressionable people see "all sides of the coin". We should be afraid that they only get to see one side.

vkazanov 8y ago
I don't really know if 33 is young or old but I really cannot agree more about the mantra thing. And it's not only the OOP craze that completely ate the industry at some point..! NoSQL-related discussions, all UIs and CLIs, the big enterprise influences vs open source approaches, etc.
- Cthulhu_ 8y ago
  It's easy to echo who you perceive as smart people; it's harder to have your own opinions, and be at a level where you can defend them in a satisfactory way. Somehow, the Go language is doing it, eschewing traditional OOP in favor of a get shit done fast and a little dirty approach. It's not even because of the charm of an individual either. Then again, before Go there was JS as the big opponent to rigid OOP. I still don't understand why they felt like they had to add half-baked classes / OOP to it.
  - vkazanov 8y ago
    I always strongly disliked the OOP school of program design, even though I learned to parrot everything required by one's typical interview process. Keeping data and functions together can be nice. In some rare cases inheritance is almost OK. But still don't understand how it all went nuts and they started writing, say, parsers in that style... But it's always nice to hear that there are other people having similar opinions. Especially if it's people like Linus.
  - vkazanov 8y ago
    > I still don't understand why they felt like they had to add half-baked classes / OOP to it. That one I'll never forgive :-)
  - jes5199 8y ago
    yeah but people hate writing Go. It’s like using the dullest possible knife. It doesn’t have objects, it doesn’t have generics (so you can’t really do Functional Programming) and it doesn’t really let you do C-style machine work either. Its basic assumption is that you’ll have an endless supply of human beings to implement everything, because the computer isn’t going to let you abstract anything
    - sk0g 8y ago
      > people hate writing Go Bit of a blanket statement. I enjoy it much more than the little Node I investigated for work. The lack of functional programming though, yeah. I feel like it might be due to GC optimisations as well, however. From what I understand, the reason the GC is so fast is because such a style of programming is heavily discouraged.
      - marcosdumay 8y ago
        > I enjoy it much more than the little Node I investigated for work. I'm another one that prefers putting a bullet on my foot than putting it on my head.
camgunz 8y ago
I almost always find myself agreeing with Linus (I don't super agree with his thoughts on debuggers, but I can see the merits), but I think you can be skeptical about technology (OOP, C++, exceptions, debuggers) without declaring to the world you have no empathy for other humans. I'm glad to see Linus taking stock of his behavior and starting to consider how he makes others feel. I think that's really hard for anyone to do, but especially someone who's been as successful as he has been. It's a huge personal leap, and I think we should be proud of him.

vkazanov 8y ago

I don't really know if 33 is young or old but I really cannot agree more about the mantra thing. And it's not only the OOP craze that completely ate the industry at some point..! NoSQL-related discussions, all UIs and CLIs, the big enterprise influences vs open source approaches, etc.

Cthulhu_ 8y ago
It's easy to echo who you perceive as smart people; it's harder to have your own opinions, and be at a level where you can defend them in a satisfactory way. Somehow, the Go language is doing it, eschewing traditional OOP in favor of a get shit done fast and a little dirty approach. It's not even because of the charm of an individual either. Then again, before Go there was JS as the big opponent to rigid OOP. I still don't understand why they felt like they had to add half-baked classes / OOP to it.
- vkazanov 8y ago
  I always strongly disliked the OOP school of program design, even though I learned to parrot everything required by one's typical interview process. Keeping data and functions together can be nice. In some rare cases inheritance is almost OK. But still don't understand how it all went nuts and they started writing, say, parsers in that style... But it's always nice to hear that there are other people having similar opinions. Especially if it's people like Linus.
- vkazanov 8y ago
  > I still don't understand why they felt like they had to add half-baked classes / OOP to it. That one I'll never forgive :-)
- jes5199 8y ago
  yeah but people hate writing Go. It’s like using the dullest possible knife. It doesn’t have objects, it doesn’t have generics (so you can’t really do Functional Programming) and it doesn’t really let you do C-style machine work either. Its basic assumption is that you’ll have an endless supply of human beings to implement everything, because the computer isn’t going to let you abstract anything
  - sk0g 8y ago
    > people hate writing Go Bit of a blanket statement. I enjoy it much more than the little Node I investigated for work. The lack of functional programming though, yeah. I feel like it might be due to GC optimisations as well, however. From what I understand, the reason the GC is so fast is because such a style of programming is heavily discouraged.
    - marcosdumay 8y ago
      > I enjoy it much more than the little Node I investigated for work. I'm another one that prefers putting a bullet on my foot than putting it on my head.

camgunz 8y ago

I almost always find myself agreeing with Linus (I don't super agree with his thoughts on debuggers, but I can see the merits), but I think you can be skeptical about technology (OOP, C++, exceptions, debuggers) without declaring to the world you have no empathy for other humans. I'm glad to see Linus taking stock of his behavior and starting to consider how he makes others feel. I think that's really hard for anyone to do, but especially someone who's been as successful as he has been. It's a huge personal leap, and I think we should be proud of him.